Steve Dyer

fencer-x:

SHUT THE FRONT DOOR.

kodamaface:

anostalgicnerd:

This was one of the most baffling things of my whole childhood.

OHMYGOD I THOUGHT I WAS THE ONLY ONE WHO REMEMBERS THIS 

by Dish Staff

You have until noon on Tuesday to guess it. City and/or state first, then country. Please put the location in the subject heading, along with any description within the email. If no one guesses the exact location, proximity counts. Be sure to email entries tocontest@andrewsullivan.com. Winner gets a free The View From Your Window book or two free gift subscriptions to the Dish. Have at it.

victorious:

More here!

sturmtruppen:

the person pretended to be a goat so the goat pretended to be a person

sebadasstian-stan:

[x]

emoij:

When you don’t understand something in class but everyone else does 

“Our friendship is made up of these brief frenzied exchanges, but the quality of our conversation, for all its feverish outpouring, is genuine.”
― Carol Shields, Small Ceremonies

If you were to have looked at my calendar yesterday you would have noticed a 90-minute lunchtime meeting titled “Important Meeting.”

What this means is that a coworker and I got our eyelashes blinged.

First: I am not a girl-girl. I do not really know what to do with most makeup. Sometimes, I smear it on and think I am getting somewhere but mostly it’s like, “Oh, you have once again woken up with your deathly pallor, I think that could be improved with some of this two-year-old pink blushy-blush.” This past year I turned 30 and so I bought some face serum that comes in a pretty blue bottle and while it doesn’t make me look like my skin is made of fetus, my forehead is a little softer now, so overall, a win.

But I do not do treatments or get blowouts and I have never tried threading. I have a very particular and compact wheelhouse that makes me feel like enough of a non-monster person to leave the house each morning and all of that was fine until my coworker showed up at work looking like a goddamn Incan princess with lashes I stared at so intently during meetings that I was fairly certain I was on my way to a really awkward conversation with HR until finally another woman asked her, “Oh, did you get your eyelashes done again?” My head exploded because apparently getting your eyelashes done is a thing you can do.

And so I did.

At Bling Lash on 14th Street in Manhattan they will attach 50-100 tiny individual lashes to your eyelids with semi-permanent glue that, with proper care, will last up to three weeks. I opted for the “Synthetic Mink” option in “natural” (other style choices: “sexy” or “cute”), and it took the very sweet technician roughly an hour to affix them to my own paltry, worthless, garbage lashes. The woman next to me snored loudly. Someone—I have no idea who, as your eyelids are taped shut—gave me a lovely complimentary hand and food massage during the treatment. I listened to This American Life and when I opened my eyes, my life was changed irrevocably.

This magical event set me back $96, plus tip ($120 for the set, but you get a 10% discount as a first timer, plus another 10% if you book online and pay in cash). This is not an insignificant amount of money to me. It’s more than I spend on a haircut. It’s less than I spend feeding my cat for a month. My coworkers didn’t say anything while I batted my eyelashes in their faces, but when I brought it up they assured me I look amazing and one of them made her own appointment for later in the week. So is it worth it?

WHAT DO YOU THINK?!

OH HEY WHAT’S DIFFERENT NOTHING JUST LIFE IS NOW IN TECHNICOLOR

Some things to know:
- Do some stretches before you lie down on the table. You’ll be there a while.
- Bring headphones.
- Shower before, because you won’t be allowed to for 24 hours afterwards. (Also you’re not allowed to “sweat,” which: hahahaha.)
- For $1,125, you can get a set of “sable” lashes, which I can only imagine comes with your own endangered sable who delicately plucks his finest hairs for you with his own tiny sable claws and then drapes himself artfully around your neck for the next three weeks of bliss.

Has anyone else done this? Am I the last one on this glam train? Is there any way to justify this financially? I’m saving the 90 seconds I spend curling my lashes and applying mascara in the mornings, but I’m not sure how to quantify that. How do we celebrate our own beauty without subscribing to the patriarchy? What beauty treatments do you shell out for, and are you able to do this guilt-free?

And how great do my eyelashes look?

Meghan Nesmith lives in New York and writes a column with her dad.

m0ntreux:

Mitch caught a body ‘bout a week aggggggoooooooooo
Fuck with us and then we tweaking, ho

wait for it… wait for it….............. just fucking do it!!1!

My friend Stephen planned his wedding very carefully. He picked Howe Caverns, in upstate New York, for the ceremony because it was a favorite weird-but-cool destination of himself and his then-finance. He roped in a mutual friend of ours to perform the ceremony; he timed the whole thing to coincide with the annual Perseids meteor shower. I wasn’t invited.

Stephen told me later that only the immediate families were there. He didn’t want to deal with having a big event, he said—“fretting over orders of centerpieces or picking hydrangeas versus birds of paradise”—or the logistics of wrangling friends to leave the city. “Plus, we knew we’d be having a nice big party here in the city,” he said with a nervous laugh. “You weren’t invited to that, either.”

In fact, none of my adult friends have ever invited me to their weddings. Not Stephen or Tom and Kim or Mary and James or Annabel and Nick or anyone else. When I bring this up, people laugh, and they almost always say, “No! Really?”

It’s not, as it turns out, very easy to ask why you haven’t been invited to someone’s wedding, even if they’ve agreed to talk to you about it ahead of time as part of a totally judgment-free piece that’s really just an exploration and definitely not some bitter, crazy exercise in blame. When the crucial moment comes, they shy away; the conversation sort of steers itself in other directions: Have you run into so-and-so lately? How many kids is it you have these days? It’s like running into a burning building, again and again and again.

The first person I asked was my friend Tom. We first met in 2004 when I moved to New York. He knew many of my college friends, but somehow we never met at school. We hung out furiously for several years; we watched all of Firefly together and went to see Revenge of the Sith with a big group. Eventually, we stopped hanging out regularly (according to Facebook, the last time I’d contacted him was on December 8th, 2007), but we’d still run into each other at parties or concerts and catch up. He married someone else from our social circle last October, and I was not invited. When I messaged him to ask why, Tom told me that he was leaving town for Europe and wouldn’t be able to speak with me. I was a little relieved to escape talking with him. I’d avoided even reading his reply to my message for several days because I had convinced myself that it would be full of angry recriminations—“Why would you ask me this?” We ran into each other at a party a few weeks later, and neither of us brought it up.

Stephen had immediately agreed to talk with me (and, for good measure, sent me an invitation to his baby shower). Though we’ve never really hung out one-on-one, we’ve known each other for about twelve years, since working at the same college radio station; we were part of a crew of several dozen that moved to New York, though only eight of us are still here. When I described our relationship to him as “a long-term-acquaintanceship,” he took exception.

“I’d call you a friend!” he responded quickly. “If you were hit by a car, I’d come visit you in the hospital. I’d watch your cat.”

I was touched. “Would you really watch my cat?” I asked him.

There was a pause. “Wait, do you actually have one?”

I’ve had the same cat since 2003.

Stephen had several theories about why we’re still technically friends, even though we’ve never been close. “Because we’ve never been like super super close,” he offered, “we’ve never had the opportunity to have a falling out.” He also suggested that, after knowing each other for so many years, we have a kind of “common-law friendship.” These were comforting ideas. But it’s hard to deny that some kind of gulf had formed between us over the years: Until our phone call, I hadn’t realized he’d planned his entire wedding in the wake of his father’s death. If I didn’t even know that, why would I have possibly been at his wedding?


Another friend of mine, Mary, got married in May in the barn at Fallingwater, Frank Lloyd Wright’s architectural masterpiece outside Pittsburgh, where she grew up. She was more blunt. “I never thought of you at all!” she told me, laughing. “Oh, God. Sorry!”

I asked Mary if her husband was originally from that area, too. “They’re from here,” she said. “I’m actually from Maryland.” Oh, Christ; I was sure she was from Pennsylvania. Maybe she went to college in Pennsylvania? I don’t know. I had to look up the name of her husband on Facebook.

While speaking, we figured out that it had been at least five years since we saw each other, and those times mostly revolved around Mad Men viewing parties. Still, three of my best friends are also her best friends. Doesn’t this give me some kind of halo effect, a friendship-by-proxy?

“I know you didn’t think—you didn’t really think that you were going to be invited to my wedding,” she said at one point. It would have been insane to invite me. But that doesn’t mean that secretly, somewhere, I didn’t want an invitation to show up in the mail.

The only non-related adult person who has ever invite me to celebrate a marriage was Marie, my very first New York City boss at my very first New York City job. I was extremely young and she much older and wiser; I was 24, and she was 26.

Her ceremony was at a country club-ish place near the water in Massapequa, Long Island, during a hurricane. I was the only person there from work; I remember looking around at dinner and suddenly realizing how thoroughly I did not know anyone else in the room; I had never even met her fiancé before. After the ceremony, it was impossible to find a cab, and so my then-girlfriend and I and rode to the LIRR in a limo with some strangers. I drank too much at the open bar and watched the water smash against the dock outside. Marie was incredibly gracious. We danced together, I think. Maybe? It was a good night.

How did I end up at that wedding and not the others? I realized that in the weeks leading up to the wedding, Marie had been talking about it wedding constantly (as people tend to do) and one day I semi-jokingly said that I was still waiting on my invitation. Ha ha ha. She looked away before saying, “Oh. Ah, yes. Of course.”


That was the only reason I was invited, she told me over the phone. In fact, that’s how many of the other guests were invited. “It’s one of those things like when you’re creating invitations and someone’s like, oh, that would be fun, and you’re like, oh shit, was I supposed to invite them?” she told me. “That happened to me a few times. I assumed if people asked, I was like, okay, sure! I didn’t really know any better.”

I guess I always imagined I’d established some kind of permanent place in the hearts and minds of the people I’d met in my life and that “not talking to someone” was a temporary condition. Maybe it is. But the more births and deaths and weddings and pregnancies you miss, the more you move from “needing to catch up” to hardly knowing someone at all.

We want to believe that there’s order and purpose in the universe, and that things happen for a reason, which we can then understand. The bleak outcome of this process was the discovery that there wasn’t a reason that I had been left out. I didn’t do anything that made anyone angry; I didn’t say anything rude; I didn’t offend anyone by missing a party. It’s just no one thought of me. When they thought of everyone they know who lives nearby and who might want to celebrate a marriage with them, I simply did not cross their mind.

Chris Chafin is a writer living in New York City who finds people endlessly weird and interesting.

Photo by Sarah Parrott

awwww-cute:

Dog with a heart of gold

Author’s Note: We wanted to thank EVERYONE who came out to Hey Ladies: Live! at Housing Works Books back in June and everyone who watched it on Livestream! It was an amazing success and we can’t wait to (hopefully) do another one!

The following brand new Hey Ladies email thread was read out loud at the live event. Past installments can be found here.

***

To: Ali, Katie, Morgan, Nicole, Ash, Caitlin

From: Jen

Subject: This is a CRISIS open this email wherever you are and I don’t care what you’re doing

Hey ladies. I struggled a lot while deciding whether I should type this out and send it off.

But like, I don’t know. I feel like I am coming to the end of my rope. Marriage is hard. Like really fucking hard. Like sometimes I literally….want to MURDER brad. And then I feel bad about it. And he’s like why are you crying and I’m like because sometimes I just want to kill you. Like he makes me so mad.

I JUST don’t think it’s hard to like, do a dish or like, turn off the lights, or surprise me a few times a week with a nice dinner or a gift!!!!!! Or a vacation!! Or a new car or like, a new blender or ANYTHING. Like you can’t get lazy on me now, Brad, we have til death do us part to make this work and, as Fergie says, I just don’t feel like he’s meeting me halfway.

I feel like I can move out like I can get divorced. I can do this and start over and like meet someone else, someone who will do dishes and not annoy me.I know you guys aren’t married, seriously none of you are even close, and I’m sure to YOU Brad always seemed like he was the perfect man but like, IDK what to do. I really don’t.

Ladies what do I do. I am so like, low. And Lexapro isn’t even helping. I’m pretty sure my shrink has me on placebos. xo jen

*

To: Ali, Katie, Jen, Nicole, Ash, Caitlin

From: Morgan

Subject: RE: This is a CRISIS open this email wherever you are and I don’t care what you’re doing

OMG Jen, I am so glad you reached out to us!!!! We are here for you bebe!! I’ve been telling everyone on gchat for months that I think your relationship is fucked. What kind of husband has a business trip on New Year’s? A woman always knows.

The first thing you need to do is GO THROUGH HIS PHONE. It’s important to deal with reality, but in my experience, if a man doesn’t feel like helping with dishes or listening to a 45 minute story about your day, it’s because there is ANOTHER WOMAN. Can you check his phone now, or do you need me to hack into the cloud?? I’m learning how to code.

Love, Morgs

*

To: Ali, Katie, Jen, Morgan, Ash, Caitlin

From: Nicole

Subject: RE: RE:  This is a CRISIS open this email wherever you are and I don’t care what you’re doing

Jen, I am sure that everything is fine!!!! On the off chance it isn’t though, maybe you should give him a threesome?? Experimenting sexually always leads to a deepening of long term commitment! From what I understand, guys are really emotional about sex, and doing weird sex stuff makes them love and respect you more!!

It’s not just an old wives tale, Jen. There’s truth there.

If you need a third, I’ve always thought I’d like to have sex with Brad, so I could be down…literally. And If it would help you guys get back on the track to love, I would gladly let your husband fuck me. I would do that for you. We’re friends!

Can you just let me know by COB? The next few days are crazy.

xoxo Nicole

*

To: Nicole, Katie, Jen, Morgan, Ash, Caitlin

From: Ali

Subject: RE: RE: RE:  This is a CRISIS open this email wherever you are and I don’t care what you’re doing

Jen, you poor thing!!! I can’t say I’m surprised but I’m truly touched you reached out to me. Guys are usually way obsessed with me, but I know third-hand what it must be like to have a man’s interest wane. Let’s do a deep dive.

1) Obviously we need to check his credit card statements going back to before you guys started dating. Let me know if you need help. I have an app for that.

2) We’ll cross check it with his facebook messages, emails, gchats, instagram and twitter interactions to look for any suspicious activity

3) I disagree with Nicole’s advice. It’s really important to withhold sex right now. Guys are really good at picking up on hints of when girls are mad.

4) At the same time, I think you should be really aggressive in showing him how his actions are affecting you. What if you sent cookies to his work every day for a week with sad faces painted on? Guys like it when you’re thinking about them, and involving their work life in your relationship.

5) ADDENDUM: Maybe Nicole should have sex with him as a test to see if he goes for it???? Would you be down? We could nannycam it for documentation.

I’m so sorry you are going through this babe. But if you got divorced, it might be fun because then you can only date other divorced guys cause no other guys will want you, and who doesn’t wanna be a stepmom LOL! Let me know what you wanna do! I have apps for all of this!! Love, Ali

~*~Some infinities are bigger than other infinities” – The Fault in Our Stars trailer

*

To: Ali, Nicole, Jen, Morgan, Ash, Caitlin

From: Katie

Subject: RE:: FWD:: RE: : RE: RE:  This is a CRISIS open this email wherever you are and I don’t care what you’re doing

Hey Jen! I have absolutely no time to write right now; I have a huge project at work. It’s actually kind of great, my boss keeps giving me more responsibility since I’m so vital as a content creator. But tweet me if you guys end up splitting up and DM me if you wanna make plans, I’m just so crazed. Too crazed to text, way too crazed to email but I did want to do you a solid and reply.

I’m super glad the girls have tons of time to gchat with you about this. But hey if you end up getting a divorce, that would be fine! You’d be fine. It’s like kind of mature and cool, in a way.

Anyway, attaching my favorite Buzzfeed list of all time: 31 Reasons You Know You’re Single And A Millennial And A New Yorker And A Woman As Depicted By Laguna Beach Season 2 GIFs.

I found it super helpful in 2012 but trust me, it’s really evergreen.  Good luck, Jen! Thinking of you. X, Katie.

~*~*Well that’s what we do, we fight… You tell me when I am being an arrogant son of a bitch and I tell you when you are a pain in the ass. Which you are, 99% of the time. I’m not afraid to hurt your feelings. You have like a 2 second rebound rate, then you’re back doing the next pain-in-the-ass thing.

So it’s not gonna be easy. It’s gonna be really hard. We’re gonna have to work at this every day, but I want to do that because I want you. I want all of you, for ever, you and me, every day. Will you do something for me, please? Just picture your life for me? 30 years from now, 40 years from now? What’s it look like? If it’s with him, go. Go! I lost you once, I think I can do it again. If I thought that’s what you really wanted. But don’t you take the easy way out.

Would you stop thinking about what everyone wants? Stop thinking about what I want, what he wants, what your parents want. What do YOU want? What do you WANT?~*~*

*

To: Katie, Nicole, Katie, Morgan, Ash, Caitlin

From: Jen

Subject: RE: RE: RE: RE:: FWD: RE: RE:  This is a CRISIS open this email wherever you are and I don’t care what you’re doing

Katie, please change your email sig? that shit is seriously giving me a depresh. Jen

*

Read more Hey Ladies: Happily Ever After at The Toast.

Lesbian/side-mulleted comedian Cameron Esposito recorded her first album ("Same Sex Symbol") for Kill Rock Stars during two shows in Portland earlier this summer. This is a clip from one of those shows. Her album will be released on October 7. Pre-order here.

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luvyourselfsomeesteem:

The children know

via

This post was brought to you by a reader. Sulagna Misra’s previous work for The Toast can be found here.

When I first saw Captain America: The Winter Soldier, I walked out with my head spinning. As my friends and I discussed the movie (it would take a couple more viewings for me to distinguish all the fight sequences), one of my friends asked, “How would he not be incredibly racist if he was from the 1940s?”

My gut reaction, garnered from my years-long academic interest in World War II and volunteering at the local Veterans’ Affairs hospital in my hometown, was a solid no. But the more I thought of the generation of American history Steve Rogers came from – the “Greatest Generation,” which Nick Fury references in the film – the more I realized that I had very little actual comprehension of the gritty details of a “man out of time.” I decided I would have to do my own research, though I struggled to find out where to begin.

In any case, I became engaged with fandom on Tumblr, discussing the name of the third movie, debating different ships (relationship pairings) in the movie, and reading funny fanfiction like this:

credit: actualmenacebuckybarnes (read the rest, you won’t be sorry)

But while doing so, I found that throughout Tumblr, people were asking and answering the same question my friend had posed. I was finding historical breakdowns of Steve Rogers’ reality, both before and after being frozen in the ice.

Have you ever seen the research capacity of fandom? It’s incredible. Turns out he had Snickers and Hershey’s in the 1940s but he’d be pretty alarmed to find the kind of apples he used to eat are extinct and chickens are now three times as big. Turns out his sex education would be better than the kind in schools now, and that living through the Great Depression might put him into a state of grim nostalgia regarding the failures of the current banking system. Turns out Steve Rogers lived in a queer neighborhood, six blocks from an “artsy queer house,” and he wouldn’t say “under God” during the pledge of allegiance.

Abby B., the creator of the Historically Accurate Steve Tumblr, regularly writes, reblogs, and adds to these historical discussions. She created the blog because she was frustrated with the idea of Steve’s conservatism and bigotry floating around in fandom discourse, and was inspired by the article by Steven Atwell on the makeup of Steve Rogers’ ideologies and belief system. Having an academic background in history, Abby debunks these theories using sources such as the New York Public Library, the New York Historical Society, the Brooklyn Collection, etc. 

Abby brought up the idea of “the past being less liberal or less progressive shows up everywhere, not just in fandom.” She said this on the blog, but reiterated, “history doesn’t move in a straight line…it cycles back on itself, and things that were once unthinkable become thinkable again.” She cited the idea of interracial marriage, which was uncommon but legal and acceptable during the Colonial period, “only to be made illegal as part of institutionalized racism and segregation as slavery became more and more profitable,” before being declared legal again thanks to Loving v. Virginia. Tumblr user mswyrr cites the medical journal DSM, noting that while homosexuality was taken out in 1973, it was only put in 1947, years after Steve became a Capsicle. 

Tumblr’s users skew younger, which makes me wonder if their (all right, our) interest and fascination stem from the fact that Millennials, in their teens and twenties, have little connection with the “Greatest Generation,” who, like Steve at 95, would be in their nineties or hundreds, if alive. The references Steve writes in his little notebook in the beginning of the film had highlighted this empty space in cultural understanding – seeing that list, I realized I couldn’t easily think of a pre-1945 reference Steve and I would have in common, at least not one I see in my daily life. The current conversation on culture and politics is shaped and dominated by Baby Boomers, the Greatest Generation’s influence in these everyday aspects of American life being quieter, less visible.  

Marvel has explored these ideas several times when unfreezing Steve Rogers in earlier decades. Mark Waid’s “Man Out of Time” focuses on the 21^st Century much as fandom does: through Steve’s politics. 

But Captain America: The Winter Soldier doesn’t go explicitly into historical notions, establishing Cap’s politics in subtler ways. In Steve’s interaction with Sam Wilson, where he immediately rejects the “good old days,” citing better food and vaccines, which makes sense considering Steve’s sickly childhood was during the Great Depression, but acts as a breath of fresh air against the way Baby Boomers take on a moral authority stance as they put their 1950s childhoods on pedestals.

This left an empty space for fandom to fill: How Captain America would exist in this newly connected and socialized world. Abby covers some of this on her blogs, answering questions from fans about how Steve might react to certain things in the future, including companies like Lyft and Uber, but in spaces like Twitter, there are accounts called “Official Bucky” or “Official Falcon,” that create a living version of the character.  One of my favorites, @official_capn, demonstrates a forthright liberalism: 

In a recent article in Vulture, Abraham Riesman explored the idea of Captain America as a bigoted jerk being compelling. But fandom is very much drawn to this moral, progressive, and a demonstratively kind Cap:

Why? In the movie, Steve Rogers reads as easily likeable but unassuming, disinterested in trading on his fame or power by hiding at his own exhibit and most interested in taking down bullies. He demonstrates leadership qualities not in a showy, charismatic way, the way politicians would do after the Nixon vs. Kennedy debates were broadcast, but in a speech-giving way, akin to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s fireside radio chats (which Steve Rogers was listening to both before and after he entered the war). In terms of political figures, he’s very much a product of his time, but definitely an exception during this one. 

While Captain America is fiction, fandom seeks out parallels among the real. One of my favorite posts about Captain America was this piece of fanart, about Captain America reading Kurt Vonnegut’s strange, lovely novels:

Credit: sairobee

The line between Kurt Vonnegut and Steve Rogers works well, considering Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse-Five is about a WWII soldier becoming “unstuck in time.” 

Seeking out these real figures, sorting out these historical details, and mapping progressive politics lends a special aspect to being part of the Captain America fandom – a better understanding of the past through the tangible connection of Steve Rogers.

Read more A History Lesson From the Captain America Fandom at The Toast.

by Chris Bodenner

After more than four years running the VFYW Contest (a feature increasingly innovated by Chas, aka Special Teams), I thought I would finally throw my own view into the ring. A reader writes:

Somewhere in Barcelona. I had a very similar view from a hotel there once.

Another:

Paraguay, because of “Chacarita” on the bus. (Chacarita is a barrio, or neighborhood, in Asunción, the capital of Paraguay.)

Another asks, “How about Chacarita, Costa Rica?” Another stands by his principles:

SW Rome. I don’t believe in researching these!

Another notices a key detail:

Winter clothing and the portable propane patio heater tell us we are looking at the Southern Hemisphere.

Another gets the right city:

Unless I’m missing something, this one had a surprisingly HUGE giveaway: the graphics on the bus – Chacaritas – clearly place the photo in Buenos Aires, Argentina. I’m putting it in the Colegiales neighborhood on Calle Maure, but being an underachiever with three kids in tow to boot, I’ll leave it to another Dishhead to take this one home!

Another shares a great memento:

A few years ago, my family went on a vacation to celebrate my dad’s 60th birthday in Buenos Aires, the location of this week’s VFYW. This photo transported me back on Sunday morning when I saw it, with its architecture, foliage and of course, the bus. While there, one souvenir I purchased was a small coffee table book, El Libro de los Colectivos, a book celebrating the unique styles and culture of the city’s buses:

The colectivo 39, without a doubt, is the major clue in his week’s photo (although according to the book, number 39 seems have have changed its look since this book came out). Looks like it used to have a red and black color scheme, different than today’s mud and cola colors. Both still have gold accents.

Another goes for the right neighborhood:

After hoping that someday there might be a VFYW pic with a clue so obvious that it might as well have been written on the broad side of a bus, there it was, right in front of me. But I’m still uncertain. I’ll go with the neighborhood of Chacarita in Buenos Aires, Argentina. More specifically, a view from the Hotel Torre at the corner of Avenues Corrientes and Olleros. Late afternoon Southern Hemisphere fall shadows agree with that intersection’s orientation, but there is still something not quite right with the hotel’s location at that corner. But I will stand firmly in quicksand with my guess.

Another adds, “The famous Chacarita Cemetery is the largest cemetery in Argentina with many notable interments.” Another reader:

Gut feeling says “Buenos Aires.” I was there a couple of years ago and this looks like the neighborhoods I walked through. I won’t go for the intersection (let alone the exact window), but let’s say it’s in the Recoleta neighborhood, near the cemetery where Eva Peron is entombed.

Another notices a detail no one else did:

The jacaranda trees and architecture told me it was Buenos Aires, probably the Palermo neighborhood, before I even tracked down the bus that features so prominently in the photo.

Palermo it is. Another reader:

Welp, everyone is going to get this week’s window location, I think. Googling “chacarita 39″ brings up this route map for the bus in the picture as the very first hit:

If I were motivated to find the exact window, I’d just take that map and – noting that the bus is turning right – find all the right turns on the route and zoom in on them. But I’m not, because thinking of Buenos Aires reminds me of my favorite author, the master Jorge Luis Borges (who was born there), and I find a parallel between the VFYW contest and his tale of the Zahir: that thing that possesses the power to induce an overwhelming obsession in those who see it, slowly consuming them until they lose all sense of reality, until finally “(they) will have to be fed and dressed, (they) will not know whether it is morning or night, (they) will not know who (they were).”

Many are the Saturdays that I have spent long hours seeking out the location of a fascinating View window. Is it possible that this contest has become my Zahir?

Another moves along:

If you think I’m going to follow the 39 Chacarita bus line through it’s entire route looking for this corner, you’re nuts.

Another gives it a shot:

I’m not super familiar with Buenos Aires, but based on the fact that the bus is turning right and on the tree-lined street, I’m guessing Avenida Santa Fe in the (trendy!) Palermo district, taken at the intersection of Santa Fe and Vidt. From a 5th-floor window in the building on the northeast side of the street.

Another tried another tool:

So, I’ve chased every turn the #39 Chacarita bus makes as it winds through the streets of Buenos Aires and failed miserably. Even tried searching through the photos of each hotel listed on the route in the Time Out guide. I’m exhausted and my head hurts!

Chas helped me plot many of the other guesses:

Another scratches his head:

I thought the geometry of this intersection was peculiar. There were three vehicles in motion at this intersection. The photo shows that the vehicles are traveling on a one way street. The vehicle to the right (in the photo – it is left in relation to the other vehicles in the real world) is making a left-hand turn, while the bus and the car next to it are going straight through the intersection. To the left are parked cars facing the opposite direction from the car turning left, which indicates that this street might be two ways.

Another nails the right intersection:

First-time entrant, long time astonished observer here. I think this was taken from the fifth-floor window (fourth-floor in European counting, i.e. ground+4) of the building on the corner of Mario Bravo and Soler in Buenos Aires (3600 Soler? Can’t figure out an exact address), on the five-way intersection of Soler, Honduras, Mario Bravo, and Coronel Diaz.

Another provides a visual of the five-way:

The #39 bus to Chacarita! Google search for “Chacarita” led me to Buenos Aires, and from there I found a detailed route map of the #39. So I just have to use Street View to check out all the intersections on the route where the #39 bus turns, right? Wrong – there’s no Street View for Buenos Aires yet. But Google Earth is a good enough substitute, and it led me to this intersection:

The photo looks like it was taken from the triangular building on the south side of Soler, and the photo is catching the bus turning onto Soler from Av Coronel Diaz. I couldn’t find the address for the building where the photo was taken, so I assume it’s residential – I’m guessing the window is on the 6th floor of the building.

Another has a great photo of that triangular building:

My city! Finally! At first sight, it looked like the snobbish Palermo neighborhood. With the 39 line bus clue, and the street that changes its direction (Soler Street), it was a piece of cake to deduce the exact corner. I know this city better than my palm. It’s a similar size to NYC, and it does have a somewhat similar vibe, but it has fewer green spaces (in that sense, it is the worst in Latin America) and a worse public transport system. It’s a worse city than New York, but I love it.

This was the building in which the picture was taken, and I’m guessing the fifth floor:

Another walks us through:

The two-steps-forward-and-one-step-back of this week’s contest:

1. Easily spot Chacarita 39 on bus in picture… Yay!

2. Note that this damn bus line in Buenos Aires runs through pretty big portion of the city… Grrr

3. Easily find a block-by-block bus route on a satellite image-enabled map… Yay!

4. Waste precious time trying to find a spot on the route where the bus turns sharply right… Grr

5. Using both the bus line website and Googlemaps, locate the slight turn (a right turn!) on from Avenida Coronel Diaz, across Soler, onto Honduras that appears to fit the bill… Yay!

6. Realize that Google Streetview is not avialable in Buenos Aires… WTF?!

My best guess is that the picture was taken from an apartment building with the address “De la Carcova 3501-3599″ in the Palermo section of Buenos Aires. The view looks due north from the fifth floor across Soler towards Avenida Coronel Diaz.

One of the best visual entries:

Another didn’t get that far:

Looks like a South American city. Somewhere I’ve been. Best guess: Buenos Aires. It may be winter there, but it’s a gorgeous summer day here, so I’m done. (I’ll leave finding the details and winning the book to someone else.) Gonna go out and enjoy myself in Central Park, in that wonderful city that you hate so much and that apparently makes so many people so miserable.

Rest assured there won’t be any gratuitous NYC bashing while Andrew is away this month. And by the way, the winters down in Buenos Aires are pretty gorgeous too; 65-degree sunny days are common. How a reader describes it:

It’s a strange place: Warm as hell but resembling a German city at times.

Another:

It turns out it’s actually more frustrating when you know the city! I have spent a lot time in Buenos Aires so I knew immediately. I suspect I’ve even taken the Line 39 Chacarita Bus. If I were a more patient individual I could trace the route of the bus but I’m not that patient. Anyway, I’m guessing somewhere in the Palermo neighborhood. I await the efforts of a more obsessive person to identify the exact corner, and window.

Another obsessive:

Another notes:

Riding those buses years ago was one of my highlights of living there. Drivers would “drive,” shift gears, smoke, talk to their girlfriends (seated behind or next to them), give tickets, make change, yell at passengers, debate passengers, and, usually, avoid minor fender benders with other vehicles and pedestrians.

Another also knows the area:

The #39 bus to Chacarita (a fabulous neighborhood where many gays have moved since the gentrification of Palermo) veers right at this intersection onto Calle Honduras. Hope I’m right! And I hope the “rational default” doesn’t further destabilize an already highly volatile economic / employment situation in Argentina.

Another has fond memories of the city:

I spent six months studying in Buenos Aires while I was in college and lived in the Palermo neighborhood with a lovely old couple, and I woke up to a similar more often than not. After I got married last year, I traveled there on my honeymoon where I tried to relive some of the magic of that city. Now, the number 39 route (which I did ride on occasion) goes through several neighborhoods, but the feeling on the street reminds me of Palermo. Thanks for reminding me once again of this great place.

Another:

It’s a tremendous coincidence that you selected this precise location, since it not only inspired great nostalgia in me as a former resident of Buenos Aires, but in fact the lower-right corner of the photo contains a view of Café Nostalgia, located at the corner of Av. Coronel Díaz and Soler in the neighborhood of Palermo.

My nostalgia was further enhanced by the fact that I used to live about ten blocks away, on the border of Palermo and Recoleta, and that I used to ride that very bus (the 39 Line to Chacarita) with great frequency while attending classes in the Faculty of Social Sciences at the University of Buenos Aires.

Great choice – thanks for the wonderful memory!

Another adds, “Café-Bar Nostalgia is described here as ‘a space in which you can revel in the antiquated whilst observing the modern,’ complete with a crowd-pleasing ‘barrelful of monkey nuts’ – yum!” … meaning a barrel of peanuts from which they serve you a bowl at your table. Another reader:

The neighborhood sounds interesting and perhaps a bit ritzy. A review of the restaurant across the street gushes about the $35-$40 main courses and the excellent people watching.

That review was written in January 2010, and prices at Cafe Nostalgia are actually much lower now. I’ve had many amazing steak dinners there with another person, sharing a bottle of wine, and I’ve rarely spent more than $50 USD. Update from a reader:

By the way, if you want a fancy (somewhat expensive by BA standards) and amazing meal, try Paraje Arevalo. We went late last year and loved it.

Just the kind of recommendation I was hoping to get by posting my view this week. And I’m finally getting a two-week vacation this month, after many years without a break from the Dish longer than a week, so keep the recommendations coming! My favorite entry this week:

I recognized Bs As right away – same as I did last time you had this city: there’s something so distinct of its aesthetic. I used to to live there back in ’09-’10. I googled the bus line and that confirmed it (as recently as 2010 there was no website like that and you had to carry around a city-issued byzantine pocket-guide). Out of the path on that route it felt like the neighborhood of Almagro to me.

I started looking along “Honduras” and when I cam across the corner of Colonel Diaz I saw “Cafe Nostalgia” pop up. Back in Bs As I worked part-time as a photographer for The Argentina Independent, a small English language newspaper. I’d photographed Cafe Nostalgia for them as part of a project on the then-54 Bares Notables (bars and cafes with a sort of historical landmark status from the city). Two of my photos [seen above and below] still come up as some of the first google image results for “Cafe Nostalgia.“

I went back and looked through the rest of that roll (all film) and even though there wasn’t any smoking gun pic, I do think that that green awning in the bottom right is Cafe Nostalgia. Maybe it’s just wishful thinking for this whole coincidence to be the case, but I’ll make my guess for that corner: Universidad de Palermo – Ingenieria, Mario Bravo 1300, Almagro, Buenos Aires, Argentina. Let’s say 4th floor.

Truly an amazing coincidence that the photographer is a Dish reader, since his photos were widely cited by other players this week. Another:

So easy!!! Since this is my hometown :) The giveaway was the bus. The “39”. Anybody who has ever visited BA knows that the city is crowded with buses everywhere, each with their different numbers and their distinctive colors. The 39 passes by my old school (University of Buenos Aires) and of course I took it many times to go places in the city. The “Chacarita” written in the top of the bus signifies the last stop, one of the biggest cemeteries in the city. So I’m guessing that you will get tons of correct answers this week. I can’t give you the exact window but it doesn’t matter, it was definitely nice to see my city in the contest this week, I really miss it. “Mi Buenos Aires querido”.

Another also reflects:

Identifying the city was easy. I went on holiday to Buenos Aires with friends in 2008, and I snapped a street scene in the containing buses with similar numbering, attached here, which helped me identify this photo location. The distinctive multi-story European architecture and signs in Castilian Spanish were also good clues.

Another wants to go:

I came across the El Ateneo book store while googling along the route 39 bus line and then stopped searching as I didn’t want it to be anyplace else. Beautiful. Thanks for adding another location to the bucket list!

Another goes for the right window:

More specifically, it’s the building located at -34.594237, -58.414353. The view is looking roughly due north (Chini will probably tell you it’s looking N at 2.278 degrees or some shit). And I’m guessing the window is on the sixth floor, maybe the seventh. No idea what the room number is. The building is located in the triangle between Mario Bravo, Soler and De la Carcova streets. It took me about 20 minutes to find the building. Then I spent the next three hours trying to figure out something about the building. Nada. I’m guessing it’s an apartment building since there seems to be a bunch of rentals nearby. You can always check out the nearby Lovers and Fuckers, if you’re in the neighborhood.

After having wasted more than a few Saturday afternoons trying to figure out the VFYW contest, I’ve now decided that if I can’t figure out a lead within 1-2 minutes, then I have to get on my life. Sometimes I’ve been able to get the city, but not the building. Other times, I have a gut feeling that I’ve been to the town or city in the picture, but can’t quite figure it out. I nailed #157, but so did everybody else. #177 was especially frustrating since it looked so familiar, I’d recently been on vacation there and had gone to college nearby.

When I looked at this VFYW pic, my immediate reaction was “WTF?”, like usual. But then I noticed the bus and realized that it offered a ton of clues. Sure enough, it lead me to this building.

(The above image is actually from a different reader.) Another suspects that “Doug Chini is fuming with boredom.” Let’s see:

To steal a line from Whittier, “it might have been.” If your viewer had waited a few seconds longer to take this week’s image just finding the right city would have been a battle, much less the exact spot. But they didn’t, and that #39 bus passing through center frame means that the Dish staff is gonna be buried under a landslide of responses.

This week’s view comes from Buenos Aires, Argentina. The picture was taken from roughly the fifth floor of a building on the 3500 block of Esquinas Soler and looks almost due north along a heading of 348.3 degrees. Bird’s eye and overhead views are attached along with a shot of the video game store just below your viewer’s window:

Another great entry:

This one gave my roommate and me a good, solid two hours of bonding time. You usually don’t give as many hints as you did here! A full bus number and name, that’s something. He’s been to Argentina, so he noticed the architecture right away, too. From there, it was scouring the bus line for an intersection where the 39 takes a right from a one-way street onto a two-way street. It’s where Av Coronel Diaz meets Soler and Honduras here. The 3500 block of Soler. We haven’t had this much fun together since we used to smoke pot and play frisbee in the park, thank you!

About 95% of the contestants this week correctly answered Buenos Aires, and dozens guessed the right floor in the triangle building at 3594 Soler, where I’m living for two months while Dishing full-time. So picking a winner was tough this week. But the prize goes to one of our favorite new contestants this year, better known as the GIF guy, for his inimitable entry:

The GIF guy, like Chini, has become such a great staple of the window contest that I asked permission to use his real name (since the Dish has a default anonymity policy of course). So welcome Blake Fall-Conroy to the pantheon of the VFYWC. Little surprise that Blake is an artist. Another creative reader wraps up this week’s contest with a short story:

The Chacarita 39

The late afternoon light was fading along Soler street, but enough of it filtered in to softly illuminate the small apartment with the dingy windows on the 6th floor. The low hum of traffic and street chatter drifted up from below and a few birds whistled loudly to each other.

Fernando’s eyes blinked open. What time was it?

He glanced over at the clock by the bed. The numbers were red and blurry, but he could make out 7:32. That couldn’t be right. Had he really slept for 3 hours?

He sat up panicked and looked down at his clothes. He was still wearing the wrinkled khakis and blue t-shirt that he had on in his engineering class that morning. The classes at Palermo were always long and boring and he was still hung over from Chasco’s party. He thought he could get a short nap in before meeting Maricela at the café across the street.

“I’ll give you one last chance,” she had said, sipping her Torrontés, her mischievous eyes sparkling from the blue party lights. “Meet me at six at Nostalgia and we’ll talk about it.” He had grinned stupidly at her as she left the party, and she had smiled back.

Fernando put his head in his hands. How had he let himself sleep through it? Would she still be there?

The answer came from the low rumble of a diesel bus overtaking the clatter of conversations from the café patio. He ran to the window and peered down at the intersection. Through the trees he could see the Chacarita 39 – Maricela’s bus – pulling out from in front of the café. He was too late. He grabbed his phone and snapped a picture as it turned onto Honduras street. The bus faded out of his view, taking Maricela across Buenos Aires and out of his life.

(Archive: Text|Gallery)

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