(For the View From Your Window contest, the results below exceed the content limit for Substack’s email service, so to ensure that you see the full results, click the headline above.)
Here’s the winner of last week’s contest (whose entry was titled “Oakland, California (not quite Berkeley)”:
Amazing. I knew quantum physics is BS! Thank you, and I’d rather keep paying to support the Dish, so I’ll take the book please.
Having that victory behind me, I now look forward to many future — and stress-free — contests just for the fun of it.
Regarding that contest, “A Border Dispute,” the VFYW chef anticipates more dispute:
I predict you will get lots of emails from people like me who knew perfectly well that the Fairmont Hotel (as the Claremont Hotel was known when we lived nearby) is in Oakland but gave the hotel’s preferred address, in Berkeley. I’m sure there will be lots of philosophizing about what truly constitutes a correct answer to the VFYW. I will spare you mine, but I look forward to how you handle it!
Here’s a dissent from a sleuth who lives in Oakland:
I’m rather disappointed (by you?) over last week’s decision. I picked the right window and gave the address used by the hotel — which evidently corresponds to the main entrance to the property in Berkeley (on Tunnel Road). However, I also wrote, “though it’s right on the border with Oakland, my hometown” — thereby figuring I had all bases covered.
On the other hand, the timestamp on my entry email was 12:20 AM on Sunday — plus, after all, there were 20-something other correct entries — so I’d better not make too big a stink! ;-)
Timestamps are never a factor in a tiebreaker, but the tiebreaker that determined last week’s winner was the fact that he was already on the Correct Guesser list (for sleuths who get the correct window for a difficult contest but lose the tiebreaker). The Oakland sleuth above, on the other hand, was not on the Correct Guesser list … but he is now, so expect a victory from him in the near future.
His dissent continues:
I also included a photo from the Claremont lobby with the backwards-reading plaque, “If you obey all the rules, you miss all the fun.” ;-)
Miss all the fun? Hahaha ... I continue to be stunned by the erudition and diverse interests and talents of the other sleuths. Every week’s a fascinating journey.
A few tidbits to add to last week’s “disputed” contest:
First, regarding the Sutro Tower (mentioned by several sleuths): Herb Caen, the famous SF columnist, called it “The shipping crate that the TransAmerica building was delivered in” — or alternatively, “The world’s largest roach clip.”
Meanwhile, I went looking for the Creedence Clearwater house on Ramona Ave (mentioned by the cinema sleuth), and I discovered that the Fogerty boys lived in two different houses in El Cerrito while growing up — along with a video walking tour of the neighborhood:
Then, finally, the CO/NJ super-sleuth (in his honorarium to Phil Lesh) included a link to the Grateful Dead’s “Box of Rain.” It’s one of my favorite songs of all time — a soothing balm for the raw times we’re living in. So I really can’t complain.
Here’s the story behind that song — a very poignant and personal one — as told by Phil Lesh:
Next up is Giuseppe, our super-sleuth in Rome:
You certainly did the right thing last week by awarding the prize to the sleuth who named the right city, but what would have happened had none of the “Oaklanders” guessed the right window? IMO, the right spot always trumps the right name. That which we call Oakland, by any other name would look as sweet …
If none of the “Oakland” guessers had gotten the right window, I would have ignored that “Oakland” technicality as a tiebreaking factor.
Another followup comes from our resident chef:
Last week my professional and VFYW worlds converged in the window submitter’s clip of Berkeley mathematician Ken Ribet talking in the Caffe Strada about his conversation with the Harvard mathematician Barry Mazur, in which he realized he could prove the theorem that inspired Andrew Wiles to retreat to a garret for seven years and prove Fermat’s Last Theorem.
I first met Ken in 1978 at the Australian National University, where I was studying briefly under John Coates — an Australian mathematician who had been Andrew’s thesis advisor at Cambridge. At the end of the year I transferred to Harvard, where Barry was my advisor and where Andrew was a visiting postdoc. Later, during my sojourn to Berkeley in the mid ‘80s, I got to hear Ken give a series of lectures about his theorem at the Mathematical Sciences Research Institute, high upon a hill above Berkeley …
… where, coincidentally, 40 years later, I’m now attending a conference on mathematics education. Here’s the photo I took this morning from the institute:
Yay serendipity! The cinema sleuth in Berkeley also has a followup:
It’s not fair! How could Hollywood have known to wait until a week after you posted the writeup for Oakland before releasing Freaky Tales, the most Oakland-focused movie in years? (From the San Francisco Chronicle: “Freaky Tales aims to provide ‘nostalgic ecstasy’ with Oakland as its main character.”) The movie’s getting a wide theatrical release on Friday, April 4, but it’s open already in the Bay Area as I write this on Thursday. It stars Pedro Pascal (yes, the Mandalorian), and it looks pretty freaky. It should’ve made the cinema report, dammit!
Here’s the promising looking trailer:
Freaky Tales seems to be filmed all over Oakland, and nowhere but Oakland. Between the opening of the trailer, a shot of a motorcycle cruising past the Grizzly Peak Boulevard overlook, and Pascal coyly winking at the camera in front of “Late Night Video”, we’re shown shot after shot of real Oakland locations: the brightly lit Oakland LDS temple as seen from Laguna Ave, Giant Burgers on MacArthur Blvd, and shots of enthusiastic youths under the marquee of the Grand Lake Theater (with one of them flipping the bird at the camera). Coincidentally, just a few days ago, that very theater was named one of “The 21 Coolest Movie Theaters in the World” by Variety), and of course the movie’s playing there.
Also, I want to give a shout-out to my favorite local musician: Fantastic Negrito (real name Xavier Amin Dphrepaulezz), who’s a two-time Grammy winner in the category of Best Contemporary Blues Album. Not only is he great, but he really gives back to the community. Here’s an example of his music:
One more followup comes from our super-sleuth in Bethlum:
Last week’s discussion of the October 20th 1991 fire reminded me that my husband’s sister’s wedding was that Sunday. They lived in the hills above Oakland, and during the ceremony, they wondered if their house was still going to be there afterwards. (The fire stopped just at the ridge before their house.) I’ve seen pictures from the wedding: dramatic shots of the bride and groom with the fire in the background.
On to this week’s view, here’s the weekly sleuth trio in Vancouver, WA:
Another welcome escape from reality this week: solving the VFYW and guessing the window!
Noticing the Palo Verde trees and a drive-through bank, our initial guesses included all of the Southwest.
It’s definitely the Southwest — so it’s very sunny, as this sleuth illustrates:
Arid geography, six-lane roads, ridges with antennas rising from flats, and a bank with a drive-through. The solar panels on the bank roof face towards us, so at first I thought (assuming we’re in the Northern Hemisphere) we must be looking somewhere between NW and NE. Wrong! The shadow on the street’s median is short enough that it must be midday, so if the shadow is pointing north, we're actually looking SW. It turns out the bank is simply agnostic about where to look for the sun in the sky:
Another guesses simply, “Reno, NV, USA.” Another gets closer: “El Paso County Detention Facility, 601 E Overland Ave, El Paso, TX.” Here’s the beginning of the entry from our mixologist:
This week’s contest was challenging, but eminently findable. My gut reaction at first was the Palm Springs/Palm Desert area of southern California. I thought you just might be tricky enough to have two California views in a row, but the prominent outcropping of rock couldn’t be found near Palm Springs, so I expanded my search. I found a similar rock formation (ironically called the “Three Sisters”) near Riverside, CA. I spent a good amount of time there, but I couldn’t find a match.
My brother-in-law, who is staying with us, walked by while I was searching and said the Palo Verde trees reminded him of where he grew up in Mesa, AZ. It’s not Mesa, but that was a pretty good guess.
A sleuth in London confirms the right state:
I hazard a guess that this photo was taken in Scottsdale, Arizona. The window’s building is the Hampton Inn & Suites Scottsdale Riverwalk, overlooking the intersection of N Scottsdale Rd and E Camelback Rd, with the mountains in the distance being part of the McDowell Sonoran Preserve. Clues were the architectural style of the buildings, the landscape, and the vegetation — plus my friend Richard, who is a keen golfer and was pretty sure this is Scottsdale (there are very few USA golf courses he hasn’t visited).
The angle of the pool was also a clue to working out the window:
Here’s Bethlum again:
I’m having a tough time this week, since I had to put my beloved cat of 15 years to sleep on Thursday (the one who kept me company during the pandemic and was my WFH buddy). I think we are in the desert Southwest, but I don’t have the oomph to do the search right now. Scottsdale, AZ?
I’m pretty bereft, so maybe I’ll find motivation for a longer search before Wednesday, but no promises.
Our condolences for your loss. Maybe a Dish reader thread from 2013, “The Last Lesson We Learn From Our Pets,” can provide a little solace at some point. (The thread was a response to Andrew losing Dusty, his first beagle.)
A previous winner deciphers a central clue:
The key this week for me was guessing that the building with solar panels was a bank branch. Some Google searches seemed to indicate that Chase has been installing solar panels on many of their branches, and the blue trim around the roof of the attached drive-up banking structure is a good match for Chase:
Let me just say that there are MANY fewer Chase branches in the Southwest than there are Dollar General stores in Appalachia! I spent hours in December for contest #446 looking at Google street-view images of Dollar Generals in NC, TN, WV, VA, KY, and OH before giving up. I never made it up to PA! Huge disappointment not to find that one.
But he found the one this week. So did the super-sleuth in West Orange:
I chuckled a little to myself over Dusty being placed over the Chase sign. God only knows how many Chase outposts there are in the world.
Two other clues are covered by the super-sleuth in Brookline:
“Clang clang clang!” went the imaginary trolley in my head, but this week’s view is definitely not St. Louis. The overall viewvibe (a VFYW-specific neologism), compared to last week, suggests that we remain in the western US — but perhaps a little farther south than Berkeley/Oakland.
I started my sleuthing by looking at street-running tram / light-rail systems in various western US cities, but I got tripped up — fine, I’ll say it; I got DERAILED — by the erroneous assumption that this city is close to a largish body of water, due to what looked to me like a wide swath of light blue (water) lined with a white border (shore). In hindsight, it’s a bit of a mirage in the desert:
So I was very much on the wrong, ahem, track. Then I spent entirely too much time following streetcar rails down major thoroughfares in places like San Diego, San Jose, Salt Lake City, and LA / Long Beach, looking for tram stations located between high-rise-y hotels with pools and CVS pharmacies with ample parking. I was able to identify the CVS as a clue because the sign below was sans beagle:
The super-sleuth in SF notes:
There are only four cities in the Southwest with light rail — Phoenix, Tempe, Tucson, and El Paso — and none of those systems are terribly large or complex, so it was pretty straightforward to find the location of this week’s view … but rather harder to pinpoint the exact window.
Chini circles that window — though it’s harder to see than usual:
From the super-sleuth in Vancouver, WA:
On first impression, this view had very distinct Phoenix vibes for me, because of those odd rock formations that seem to stick up out of nowhere. But maybe that’s because I was just there in January, so there could be lots of other places with a similar look.
I checked to see what Google thought, and it seemed to confirm Phoenix, or possibly Las Vegas. I ruled out Las Vegas pretty quickly after a brief goose chase and ended up finding a photo with an almost identical view to ours. However, according to the photo, the name covered by Dusty in our view was clearly a Chase Bank. Remembering the VFYW advice to check near the airport, I began to search nearby Chase branches on Google street view and found our view on the fourth try. Yay!
Being from the cool rainy Pacific Northwest, Arizona is a great place to visit in the winter. Being rockhounds, we like to go to the Rock and Gem shows in Quartzsite held every January, so we fly to Phoenix, rent an RV, and drive to the tiny town of Quartzsite for a few days. It’s probably more known for its RV community than for its rock shows, but we managed to combine both. Next winter we may head down to Tucson in February for their amazing Rock and Gem shows that are held all over the city.
The super-sleuth in Asheville scrutinizes the rock formations in view:
I found this contest to be quite challenging. After searching the mountainscapes around Albuquerque, Tucson, Las Vegas, Phoenix, and parts of California, I was feeling defeated. But I kept having a feeling that the Phoenix mountains would be right if I could only view them from the correct perspective. It took me quite a while before I finally got to this view of the mountains north of Phoenix:
It still wasn’t a perfect match, but there were enough similarities to keep me playing with angles to try to make it a conclusive match. What about the smaller mounds, which are closer to the VFYW vantage point? I couldn’t find them. I have circled them here on the original VFYW:
Out of desperation I started searching for resort hotels north of Phoenix. One of them that popped up was the Marriott Phoenix Resort Tempe, but it turns out the hotel is nowhere near tall enough for the viewpoint of the VFYW:
But wait! Are those the smaller mounds I’ve been looking for? Zooming out a little bit, it looks very promising:
A little cruising around and changing angles got me the following image, which I have displayed above the actual VFYW:
He went on to find the window’s building. Same for the CO/NJ super-sleuth:
This was another contest where mountain topography was the key to finding the location. My mother moved to Mesa after I graduated high school and I spent many vacations down there, so I recognize the general Arizona landscape pretty well. I actually zoomed around Tucson first, using Google Earth, but after finding no mountains that matched the view, I moved to Phoenix and spied fairly quickly the dominant ridge-line, replete with radio towers. Once I nailed the general area, I did a quick search for CVS locations; and on the second one, I hit paydirt.
By the way, this week’s contest returns to the general location of the very first contest I entered: #283, from the Mystery Castle in Phoenix. In fact, we are only about eight miles from that castle. In the mock-up below, this week’s building and the general direction of our view are depicted with the yellow circle; and the red circle shows the location and direction of view from the Mystery Castle:
In fact, this week’s view is looking in the direction of the Castle, which is just behind a butte (circled in orange) and depicted with the red arrow. Amazing that after last week — the first time a view showed a prior view — it happened again! Well, I don’t think we can actually see the castle, since it’s hidden by the butte, so I guess last week still remains unique — but only just.
The super-sleuth in College Park also notes, “The first VFYW I ever solved was from Mystery Castle in Phoenix — 2,468 years ago. So, full circle!”
Contra CO/NJ, the cinema sleuth points out:
In the writeup last week, the Chicagoland super-sleuth directed our attention across the bay to the building that had provided the view in contest #415 (1200 California Street). It was hiding in plain sight in the background as a tiny smudge among other tiny smudges. Kudos! His eyes are better than mine.
But that’s not the first time a view building for one contest has appeared in another contest’s view photo. The VFYW’s willingness to engage in self-reflection has been demonstrated at least twice before. The window for contest #187 (Cebu City, Philippines) was in a hotel that would reappear nine years later in the background of the view for contest #382 (Lapu-Lapu City, Philippines).
And then in a reversal of the phenomenon, the view photo for contest #198 (RIHGA Royal Laguna Guam Resort in Tamuning, Guam), included in its background a partial view of the hotel that nearly 10 years later would provide the view for contest #400 (Alupang Beach Tower Hotel in Tamuning, Guam):
I call it View Ouroboros.
Nobody knows the VFYW archive better than Berkeley.
Back to this week’s search, here’s the super-sleuth in Albany “(who btw also happens to be from West Orange, presuming that super-sleuth is from the one in NJ — small world)”:
This view is in Pheonix, or Scottsdale, or Tempe. I couldn’t find the particular buttes or mountain in the background, so I don’t have the actual window, building, or town. But I did find a lovely Ethiopian restaurant near the airport, Cafe Lalibela. Their products are also available at Whole Foods in AZ, CA, and NV. Hopefully the view is from one of those states.
It is, and one of those three cities. The Brookline sleuth names it:
Eventually I stopped searching for a littoral location and turned my attention to more promising pursuits: identifying the unusual roof of the tram shelter and the distinctive rock formations. The latter seemed like the sort of buttes one would see in the Southwest, which moved me away from California and opened my mind to Arizona and the Tucson streetcar system. I hunted around for tram shelters featuring flat roofs and pointy tips sticking up, and I soon came upon a station that looked pretty similar:...
