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VFYW: Closing A Dastardly Door

For contest #427, we find ourselves on the westernmost tip of a non-Western place.

Chris Bodenner

Jul 20

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(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.)

From last week’s winner:

Thank you so much! We’re honored to have won the VFYW book!

A followup on last week’s contest comes from the wine geek in San Francisco:

I was glad to see that the Albany super-sleuth and I agree on El Vinedo Local — good taste! But even more enlightening was learning that there are whale sharks in the Atlanta aquarium. Who would have thought?
Shiela and I swam with whale sharks in Oslob in the Philippines. Actually, she held on to the outrigger and I swam with the sharks. I was the only person out of about 20 who actually got into the water with them. They were only juveniles, about 15-20 feet long, and not threatening, but their size is intimidating. Shiela asked the guides if the whale sharks were safe. They said, “They don’t eat people, but if you accidentally get sucked in their mouth, we will pull you out.” That was enough for her to cling firmly to the outrigger.
Also, I was very interested to read about your history of the Funk family. I was an American Studies major in college (American history/literature/poli-sci), and I mostly focused on literature but loved history too. I’ve ordered a copy of your book because it’s just the kind of thing I like to read when I’m not studying wine. Kudos to your achievement!

Thanks! Perhaps it’s no surprise that our resident historian — the super-sleuth in Warrensburg — is also checking out the book:

Before all the VFYW stuff, a hearty congratulations on your new book! I just got my copy in the mail yesterday and I very much look forward to reading it. My cat Margo is also apparently a fan:
I quite like your idea of how focusing on a few individuals or a family can serve as a “helpful lens” or “window” into history — American or otherwise. Such a view often adds texture and complexity to master narratives, illustrating the impact of big ideas and events on everyday life. Conversely, it also shows how the quotidian — interpersonal dramas, local business practices, struggles on a family farm — can shape those bigger moments and movements in profound ways.
Again, congratulations on your book! And it has 863 endnotes??

It was a slog to integrate that many, but I didn’t want the project to be a puff-piece about the family. Our Warrensburg sleuth, by the way, took a similar approach this week by focusing on an individual to serve as a “window” into the history of this week’s location. His report is down below, after we reveal the window.

On to this week’s search …

Wait, wait, wait! Your Atlanta writeup still left several mysteries:
Team Bellevue’s Mystery #3: What is that mountain in the background? Is it the orange-arrowed building in Giuseppe’s view from the other side?
What was the room number? The winning picture suggests 8th floor. The room number is not specified on the fire-escape diagram. I want to record how far off my 9th floor guess was (for quality control purposes, of course.)
How in hell did all those folks manage to find such good pictures of the north side of the Georgian Terrace? Did they send their cousins in Atlanta down to take some photos for them, or is there a vein of functionality in Google Earth I’ve yet to master?

That sleuth got some help from Gen Z:

My third question answered: my teenage son demonstrated to me that the north-side views are all easy to get using Google Earth’s website — not the Google Earth Pro app that I’d been using. The clue that the images were artificially generated was that all the parked cars on the north-side views are identical, no matter the perspective. (I should probably let my entries age for a few days before submitting them ... )

As far as the room number, last week’s submitter and his wife came up short: “I have no idea why I didn’t put the room number. What a rookie. I’m trying to find out from the lady” — but no luck. As far as the “mountain in the background,” here’s Team Bellevue:

It turns out to be a rooftop flourish atop the Viewpoint Condos just north of the Georgian Terrace. Curious if any other VFYW submitters found more out about this odd-shaped bit of real estate. We searched but couldn’t find pictures from the curved bit … though the penthouse was available for a cool $1.34M back just as COVID hit:

Another followup on last week’s contest comes from our super-sleuth in Augusta:

I feel my VFYW honor would be at stake if I didn’t at least acknowledge the View’s first layover in my home state since I started entering the contest. I DID recognize Atlanta, but at first glance, I actually thought it was Augusta, since there’s something so familiar about those trees, buildings, and horizon. While I have been to the Fox Theatre a few times, I haven’t actually spent all that much time in Atlanta. It’s too long a drive from Augusta for comfortable day trips, so I only ever really find myself there when I need to make use of its airport :)
All the non-“Atlantean” Georgians love to sneer at Atlanta, of course, but it remains quite immune to our scorn, since it utterly dwarfs every other city in the state.

One more followup comes from the “average super-sleuth in NYC”:

The Urban Tree Canopy chart sent by the Berkeley champ surprised me. I attribute NYC’s notably high 13th place ranking to the most successful program of Mayor Bloomberg’s plaNYC. Between 2007 and 2015, the MillionTreesNYC initiative planted a million trees throughout the five boroughs. And there’s a website called Before & After NYC that juxtaposes a photo from early-to-mid-20th century and one from the same location today:
I am always taken aback at how treeless the streets used to be. If you ever move to NYC, make sure the broker’s listing includes “tree-lined” street.
As for this week’s window, I’m stumped. But I’m guessing 42 correct guesses.

Pretty spot on: 43 named the right building (out of 63 for the right city, out of 76 total entries). One of them is the UWS super-sleuth, whose entry begins:

A highly fortified building, with bollards, barbed wire, and a secure entrance. Could it be a consulate or embassy, perhaps from a not-so-rich country? Some kind of local government building, with the mural highlighting the country’s various assets? Couldn’t find anything. Wait ... could it be their DMV?? It’s a measure of my desperation that I even considered this.
I can’t find that street light that looks like a British colonial hat. Ditto for what’s reflected in the building’s windows, which looks like a structure with red or orange awnings. In short, I have nada.

The super-sleuth in San Mateo generally identifies the building across the street:

The two murals on the UN building, the palm trees, and the UN building itself caught my eye. But there’s way too much going on in the VFYW, including the power poles with wires cutting left and right, street lamps, street signs, planters, and bushes.
I also didn’t like the murals being separated. So for the VFYW Reimagined this week, I simplified. I merged the two separate murals into one, and created a stylized repeating icon of the palm tree and a section of the UN building. I also included a pedestrian walking in front of one of the elements of the mural, as if he was part of it:
Or, in case you think that’s too radical, here’s a simpler approach (I added Dusty back in and moved her up):

From a previous winner in NYC:

Frankly, as a former Model UN kid, I’m embarrassed it took me this long. I’d know that distinctive baby blue anywhere.

This next sleuth is getting Caribbean vibes:

The place looks rundown and is crime-ridden, due to the barbed wire protecting every building. The mural suggests a Black-majority nation. I thought of South Africa, but the two vehicles are driving on the right side of the street. One part of the mural shows 17 items, which I recognized as UN development goals.
Then I cheated — is this cheating? — by feeding the above information to ChatGPT, and it replied with Port-au-Prince, Haiti. There is indeed an office of the UN Sustainable Development Group in that city, but the pictures of the building did not match your picture. So I searched in Google for the organization and city and “murals”, and while none matched, I discovered that the UNSDG has a program that pays for murals to be painted in the city.
I have two remaining thoughts. The murals contain zebras, which have nothing to do with Haiti, and I wonder if this sort of pan-Africanism isn’t the sort of ideology that a UN bureaucrat would love to promote. And murals do very little to beautify a city, so maybe the UN should work on cleaning up garbage and fresh coats of paint.

ChatGPT also didn’t help the CO/NJ super-champ:

Fun contest this week! The two critical clues were taxis and the United Nations. I immediately keyed in on the taxi cabs, as their paint scheme looked unique. I did a quick Google search of “yellow taxis with black front and rear fenders” and did not come up with an exact match right away. I thought, this sounds like a project for OpenAI! But I quickly confirmed that ChatGPT — like a overconfident but self-assured blowhard — is completely full of shit.

Here’s an excerpt from his long back-and-forth with the bot:

Me: What world city has taxis with yellow everywhere except the front and rear quarter panel, which is black?
ChatGPT: The city you're referring to is Barcelona, Spain. Barcelona’s taxis are predominantly yellow, with the front and rear quarter panels painted black.
Me: No, Barcelona’s taxis have black roofs too. The ones I am looking for have yellow roofs.
ChatGPT: I apologize for the mistake. The city you are referring to is Mumbai, India. Mumbai’s taxis are predominantly yellow with black front and rear quarter panels, and they often have yellow roofs.
Me: No, Mumbai’s taxis also have black doors and hood and trunk. The ones I am looking for are yellow in those places.
ChatGPT: The city you are referring to is Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Taxis in Addis Ababa are predominantly yellow with black front and rear quarter panels.

Chini outsmarts AI and circles the window:

Team Bellevue names the right continent:

A fun search this week, lots to dig into, and ultimately it was again the art that lead us to our solution …
QUICK READS
Pair of very distinctive taxis
Mural full of indicators we’re in Africa, likely near the ocean, and a large city/towers
Intriguing light-blue guard hut
Ah, the ocean is indeed near — reflected in the windows!
Can’t make much of any signage, but the text looks like it’s all Roman
DIGGING DEEPER
Okay, let’s take the mural literally: we have zebras on an ocean in one panel … Where will we find zebras? And are any near the ocean? Here’s the range we found for zebras:
We ran with this to Kenya, Tanzania, South Africa, and even that strip of land into Angola, but nothing panned out. And the taxis didn’t match.
Since the taxis were helpful at rejecting places, they seemed the next best area to dig, but no amount of “yellow and black taxi” queries turned up matches for our cabs in the view. It did however turn up this fantastic “taxi” from TopGear and Land Rover, which while not on the linear path to the solution, is our rightest-wrong of the week:

That team ultimately got there. Our super-sleuth in Bend didn’t quite:

I don’t know where this is, but it looks like sub-Saharan Africa or the Caribbean. The sign that says something like “Peschard ... ” — makes me think there may be some old French connection, and the license-plate aspect ratio then leads me to West Africa. I’m randomly picking Sierra Leone (and my second guess is Burkina Faso). I’m probably way off, but you may need some content for the top of the results write-up, where I am proud to appear.

A previous winner is concise with her guess:

Lagos, Nigeria? It’s near the equator (satellite dishes). Palms look correct. Feels like Africa. Hot.

The musical sleuth in Indy has a wonderful entry for the wrong country:

Conakry Region, Guinea? Not 100% sure on this, but here we go ...
Moh Kouyaté was born in Conakry in 1977. His influences are familiar names like B.B. King, George Benson, and Jimi Hendrix, but also Sékou Diabaté, who is a “wizard of the six-string.” Moh’s grandmother bought him his first guitar at an early age. He followed the traditional Guinea music and became known as an “up and coming” guitar player.
His first band was called Conakry Cocktail, and they were a popular band in the Conakry nightlife scene. In 2004, Moh met the bluesman Corey Harris, and the following year he went on a three-month bus tour of the US and experienced America. He said that “while the sources of the blues draw on West African soil, I discovered its tributaries: the Mississippi Delta and its brilliant guitarists, so close cousins of America.” Here’s a duo with Corey Harris where you can hear that American blues influence:
In 2007, Moh moved to Paris, where he discovered the “Parisian afro-jazz scene.” He began performing in a quartet in different venues all over Paris and into Europe.
In 2015, he recorded his first album Loundo, meaning “One Day.” In 2017, he recorded his second album Fé Toki. (Neither of these are on Spotify.) In 2020, he started Guinea Music All Stars, a collaboration with other Guinea musicians to “put in the international public eye the modern music of Guinea.” In 2023, he released an album titled Mokhoya (the only one on Spotify), and here’s the most popular song:
However, the two songs I really liked are not on Spotify and are both several years old:
P.S. To the Alaskan globetrotter who mentioned the connection between REM and Georgia: I did know that, but REM is from Athens, not Atlanta, so I went with a band that was actually from Atlanta. And of course I love REM, but mostly their stuff from pre-1990. The albums Murmur, Reckoning, Fables, Life’s Rich Pageant, and Document are just all brilliant! Though they lost me a little when songs like “Shiny Happy People” and “Everybody Hurts” came out.

Another sleuth gets back to the window search:

The first clue for me was the taxis. It seemed likely that the livery was standard to the locale. But which locale? Well, based on the murals — the Africans in them and the zebras — I decided the greatest likelihood was Africa, with the Caribbean seeming a possible second locale. My first thought was Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire — for no particular reason — but a Google search for “Abidjan taxi” showed a different livery. My next guess was Windhoek, Namibia — also not the same as those cabs shown — then Durban, Cape Town and Pretoria. All had a uniform livery, which was encouraging, but not this livery.

He eventually got there. So did the super-sleuth in Yarrow Point: “I can’t wait to read the commentaries on Friday! So much history, so much art and culture; it’ll be fascinating.” Our Russian-American sleuth also knows the place:

It was the taxis that gave it away. Most taxis in this city sure seem to be like these:
And if you think all these cars had their damaged quarter-panels replaced, here’s a bunch of new Toyota “Starlets” ready to hit the road:
So they come that way! (But why the hell would a company name their cars “Starlets”? Seems very porny, in a Stormy Daniels sort of way.)

The super-sleuth in DC looks closer at the cars and names the right country:

This week’s contest was more difficult than I had assumed at first glance. That photo contains several helpful clues, the most important of which (at least for me) were the blurry license plates. The taxicabs in the photo told me that it was a country where they drive on the right, which ruled out a dozen African nations where left-side driving is the rule. Removing those lefty countries from the list still left 36 nations.
That’s where the blurry license plates came into play. ...

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