(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.)
Highlights from this week’s writeup:
From the winner of last week’s contest:
Wow, what a treat! I’ll take the book please. You made my week, thanks!
A personal view from a sleuth:
I have collected several photos that might suit the VFYW, but this one comes with a special story:
My wife Harriet and I have recently completed a 38-mile bike ride around the North of Glasgow as part of Olympic cycling champion Sir Chris Hoy’s “Tour de 4” bike ride. He, like me, has Stage 4 prostate cancer, hence the origin of his initiative. We’ve practised twice a week for three months amidst the beautiful early morning countryside of North Hampshire and West Berkshire. So our reaction to finishing was, “Shall we do that again?”
Glasgow, as you might expect, was wet, with appalling road conditions and lots of traffic lights we are unaccustomed to. But we had a lot of fun talking to others as we went round, and at the after-party. Between us, we raised nearly £20,000 for two cancer charities. Second son Hugh, wife Thea, and granddaughter Lyra joined us, and here’s a post-finish photo:
But to the point: the other photo I sent is the view we woke to that morning on Sunday, 7 September. We were in Room 213 of the Moxy Glasgow Merchant City. It was dry, but rain was forecast and duly arrived for the start. It may suit your purposes, although I recognise identifying the window from the outside would be a challenge. That part of Glasgow seemed ripe for development, but the present cityscape is unattractive.
You find us now in Zakynthos, Greece. At 31°C, it’s a far cry from the Scottish climes. It’s a birthday gift from Harry for my 70th — only too conscious we need to celebrate what we have now. Just loving it.
Let’s get another view for the 71st. Here’s a followup from our super-sleuth in Riverwoods:
Howdy Chris! Regarding last week, man was I kicking myself after learning it was China. I assumed that you wouldn’t so quickly go to China again, so I checked “TV and radio towers in ____” everywhere in the region except China! Dagnabits! So disappointing, and I have to remember to consider all options regardless of past views because your selection of a photo for that week is a third component of the VFYW, besides locating cities and windows. :)
Another followup comes from Augusta, GA, who answers the call:
Greetings! Did somebody page me last week? :)
Sorry to have been more of a super-slacker lately, but real life does not seem to have a pause function (I hope that the Developer will address this in a future update). Pentiment (covered in contest #475) is indeed on my ever-growing list of videogames that I haven’t yet found time to play, though since it isn’t 500 million hours long, it may be one I’ll actually be able to finish.
For those in search of some more historical videogame goodness, Kingdom Come: Deliverance and its sequel (both by Czech developer Warhorse Studios) are solid choices — though in terms of gameplay, they’re less Pentiment and more Skyrim-minus-dragons. They take place in early 15th century Bohemia and incorporate a lot of realistic historical detail (though “realism” can sometimes be an impediment to gameplay). Here’s a video comparing locations in the first game to their real-life counterparts:
The VFYW chef remarks on the loss of a central feature of the contest:
Congratulations to the Austin mixologist on his retirement from the cocktail column. He has had a superb run, and I have enjoyed reading about — and in most cases tasting — every concoction he has given us.
Another quick note comes from our super-sleuth in Vancouver, WA:
Thank you as always for all your work on this fun contest! It was fun to read about how it’s evolved over the years and become more complicated — probably making it more work for you, but adding to everyone’s enjoyment as well!
To my enjoyment as well — though yeah, it’s been a ton more work over the years. In 2020, the contest took me about four hours to edit; and these days, it’s 10 to 14. But thankfully, the new subscriptions generated by the VFYW every week have increased as well, with an average of about 20 — so that’s always nice.
On to this week’s view, a sleuth gets metaphysical — and throws shade:
Dear VFYW judges,
This week’s entry is a trick question — because it’s of a non-place. It resembles the sorts of anonymous voids that we all have to pass through in non-time. This is a depiction of a flat, anonymous, lonely, entirely transient realm where no one and nothing exists.
Another sleuth is more accurate with “Somewhere in North America”:
I typically spend two minutes on the contest before giving up. This week I googled the name on the trash truck, and the website says the company serves millions in North America. So I feel good about eliminating six continents.
Here’s the beginning of the entry from Berkeley:
My mistake this week was trying to practice the method that Doug Chini described a dozen years ago when he said he typically spends 10-15 minutes just analyzing the image before getting to work on it. I sat there gathering impressions on every discernible element in the photo when I should have just pounced on the first thing I saw.
I’m not sure why you let Dusty nap on one of the signs for Moxie’s Grill & Bar but allowed the other sign to stand there shouting “Look at me! Look at me!” I’d never heard of Moxie’s, and for all I knew it could’ve been a mega-chain with thousands of locations that just hadn’t reached the Bay Area yet. So I didn’t know I should’ve simply started looking at each of the restaurant’s 57 measly locations in order. If I’d done that, the search would’ve ended in less than a minute, because the Moxie’s in our photo occupies the second spot in their website’s alphabetical list of locations.
But where would the fun have been in that? So even though the search probably took orders of magnitude longer than it would have if I’d just approached it with a sledgehammer, I’m sort of glad I let other clues tempt me to exercise the brainpan a bit.
Here’s the aerial view from Chini — a staple of the VFYW since 2012, with 347 entries!
San Mateo is another mainstay of the VFYW:
Given the view’s somewhat bland affect this week, competition for the Reimagined focal-point was a tossup between the Moxie’s sign and the GFL Environmental green truck. Initially, Moxie’s was in the lead, although I was suspicious about why you left the name unobscured. Was it a red herring?
Yes, in a strange way it was, although the technical term for it is “brand churn.” Moxie’s started in Calgary in 1986 as a deli called Muncie’s, but changed its name to Moxie’s less than two months later. Moxie’s added “Classic Grill” to their name around 1997, and replaced “Classic Grill” with “Grill & Bar” circa 2012. Then in 2022, Moxie’s Grill & Bar dropped “Grill & Bar” and the apostrophe and became just “Moxies”. So we can say that the Moxie’s sign is at least misleading and unworthy of Reimagined focus.
All that de-Moxification left us with the distinctive green GFL Environmental (short for “Green For Life”) truck. But the VFYW only gave us one green truck, and only the rear-end of it, and only one type of GFL truck. So clearly the Reimagined this week will have to fix that:
His followup gets a bit overzealous:
After sending my latest email, I began to re-imagine the Reimagined. I had an epiphany: Why stop with four green trucks? Why not eight trucks? Why not 16? Why stop there? After all, I’m not paying by the truck.
So here is the VFYW ReimaginedTMReimaginedTM:
Here’s a note from Warrensburg about the aforementioned apostrophe:
Since “Moxie’s” became “Moxies” as part of a wider rebrand in 2022, the lingering punctuation suggested one of their older locations that has not yet updated their signs. In the US, the only states with older apostrophe Moxie’s were Texas and Florida, but Texas is a front-and-rear-plate state, and the Florida locations are in denser commercial areas, so that pointed me north of the border.
Here are the two Moxie’s signs unblurred and debeagled:
From the UWS super-sleuth:
Unlike the case with those f-ing Dollar Generals in contest #446, there is a finite number (fewer than 60) of Moxie’s in North America. It was simply a matter of doing an Google search on “Moxie’s restaurant with gray stone wall.” Et voila!
Here’s a “side note” from the super-sleuth in West Orange:
Have you ever tried “Moxie,” a soda popular in Maine? Truly vile stuff.
A recent winner gets nostalgic:
Ah, home again! This view was one of those that just screamed “close to my house.” And while it’s 700 miles away from where I live in Seattle and 1,000 km from where I grew up in Vancouver, it still has that Northwest feel to it.
Our super-sleuth in Alexandria names the right country:
Hope you’re enjoying the pouring rain today! My guess this week is Vaughan, Ontario, Canada on Colossus Drive. I’m not confident, but I’m hoping I get the Canada part right, at least.
I looked up the garbage truck and found that Green For Life waste management is headquartered in Vaughn. It looked flat enough to be southern Ontario. I googled and found that there is a Moxie’s Grill Bar there (the apostrophe is significant) on Colossus Drive — across the street from the RioCan Colossus Shopping Center — that could provide the view depicted. The big building across the intersection in the background with a red square on it seemed plausibly like it could be a Costco, which is found in that location in Vaughn.
Thanks again for keeping the contest going and writing up such a fun summary each week.
Our super-sleuth in Bethlum points to the right side of the country:
Somewhere in western Canada? I’ve been off with granddaughters this week, so I haven’t had time to search out the window. I did enjoy last week’s submission on I.M. Pei, and I can’t wait to find out about that building with the red corner that’s in this week’s view:
Details on that building come from our super-sleuth in Albany:
I googled “Large white rectangular building with red corner roof,” and even without including “Canada” in the search, the top hit was a Reddit query for ... our building! It’s a new Coca-Cola plant.
The Reddit threads discussing the plant predictably devolved into arguments about whether it would lead to more or fewer jobs, due to the automation technology utilized, and that the construction jobs were just temporary and benefiting existing workers. Also in dispute was the fairness of allowing the company to draw water that would be trucked out of the community. Shockingly, fresh water is a scarce resource when you live in a prairie area (not that it isn’t a scarce resource everywhere). Here’s a time-lapse video of the building in process and completed.
Next up is Giuseppe, our super-sleuth in Rome, who names the right province:
You know you are in Canada the moment you see the photo, almost subliminally: the large building on the right side of the photo sports the colors of the national flag, and both the trees and architecture are compatible with Canada, to say the least. Confirmation comes from the presence of Moxie’s and GFL — two Canadian businesses. (Yes, Moxie’s also operates in Texas, Arizona, Massachusetts, and Florida — and GFL in much of the US — but our photo was obviously not taken in any of these states.)
Now, let’s look at the cars in the parking lot: four out of six don’t have front license plates. We are in a province or a territory where only the rear plate is required:
Given the landscape, it looks like we are in Alberta or Saskatchewan. Besides, we are probably in a big city, though due to what looks to European eyes like a criminal waste of space, it is a little hard to tell at first. So it’s Calgary or Edmonton, since Saskatoon is probably too small.
He settled on the right city. A sleuth in Pheonix names it:
I recently let my subscription lapse, as I haven’t found time to read every issue of the Dish, but I hope to win so I can get back to reading Andrew’s wisdom each week. Even if I don’t, I’ll likely resubscribe anyway, as the Dish is one piece of reason in an exceedingly crazy world...
