Postcard of the Day

[fflo]

 

Comments

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Any guesses about the location?

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

It reminds me of the Duquesne Incline in Pittsburgh, but I wouldn't put money on it.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

You're not terribly far off, in the grand scheme of things. That river in the picture starts in Pittsburgh, where the Allegheny and the Monongahela come together. This point's about as far along as that river freezes, though apparently once in a while it freezes a little further, around Louisville. Final hint: the city pictured is where the Licking River flows into the river pictured.

As an aside, and speaking of Louisville, have you ever been to that fossil bed place across the river from Louisville? It's way cool. You can walk out into the river. And the visitor center has a whole thing about how that's as far south as some big ol' glaciers came, and so the north and the south really are different. I mean they don't say that second part, but I thought it.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Is the fossil place "Big Bone Lick?" I actually visited there once.

[peteralway.livejournal.com]

Oh, and on that trip to Pittsburgh, we went to the very confluence where that river starts. I think my fellow commenter is right about Cincinnatti. Only spelled correctly.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Yep!

[fflo.livejournal.com]

"Falls of the Ohio"

[amw.livejournal.com]

I give up! My gut feeling is something like Minneapolis or St Louis, but i think the river is too small. I searched around for a city with a river and church on a hill, got Springfield MA, but that seems too small. The weird thing is there are no bridges! Why are there no bridges! Maybe it's a border town?

[fflo.livejournal.com]

I love that you're playing! The middle of the US is a good instinct. The river they're looking at joins the Mississippi a bit further south than St Louis. See other clues above in reply to Peter's comment, if you want to hone in on it!

[amw.livejournal.com]

This is a good puzzle!

I traced up the Ohio River and at first i thought it might be Evansville, but that's too small and rural. Your final clue (above) reveals it must be Cincinnati, but i have been wandering around Google Maps and i can't find where the picture could've been taken from, given there are no bridges. According to wiki the Daniel Carter Beard Bridge was only built in 1971 so it's possible this was taken before that.

The tallest building is Carew Tower, so it would make sense if there was a lookout point up there. But... Carew Tower doesn't have an expressway coming directly out of it. Maybe PNC Tower? Either way, i'm assuming they're looking east.

I am also completely obsessed by that church on the hill (top left corner) as the primary clue. You would think that would be a large and unique enough building that there would be lots of photos online. It might be Immaculata Church on Mt Adams, but the pictures all show it to be beige with a blue roof, not the red roof it seems like in this picture.

This reminds me of the View From Your Window contest on Andrew Sullivan's blog (now newsletter). He posts a reader-submitted photo from somewhere in the world and then the readers get a week to try figure out where it is. It's astonishing how precise some people can be, hunting down not only the exact building but even the exact window where a photo was taken from, even in the smallest and most obscure corners of the world.

[fflo.livejournal.com]

That's it, and the Carew Tower is right! Maybe some of the remaining mysteries can be chalked up to it being from (probably) the '60s. Maybe the church's gotten a new roof and paint job.

Didn't know Andrew Sullivan had such a thing. Sounds like fun. Also it reminds me vaguely of that link for random-ish views from people's windows that went around in the early pandemic (and might have a bookmark on my work computer, but I can't remember at this point).

[amw.livejournal.com]

You can go back and view a whole bunch of the VFYW Contest on his old blog: http://dish.andrewsullivan.com/vfyw-contest-gallery/

It's funny if you start with some of the early window views people are just like "oh, it's here", then later on you start getting people submitting screenshots of Google street views with arrows drawn on and all kinds of anecdotal information about how they spent their honeymoon there or whatever in the hope of getting a closer or better win. Definitely one of the highlights of his blog back in the day. He's recently restarted it as a newsletter on Substack and not gonna lie... it's the main reason i subscribed 🤣

[fflo.livejournal.com]

Oh, btw, they're looking down from the top of a building, not a hill. So that part's a bit deceptive.