Mystery City #14: What City is This?

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by Borderstan.com July 5, 2010 at 11:26 pm 2 Comments

Mystery City 14. (Luis Gomez Photos)

Welcome to Week #14 of Luis’ collection of cities from South America, Europe, Australia and North America.

Hints: This week’s mystery city is a coastal city with a Mediterranean climate.

Mystery City #13 from last week is Prague in the Czech Republic, the correct choice of 23% of readers. The top choice was Budapest.

We will reveal the identity next Tuesday when we post Mystery City #15. Previous mystery cities have been Caracas, Valaparaiso, Sydney, Bratislava, La Paz and Santiago, Long Beach, Toronto, St. Louis, Valencia (Venezuela), Genoa, Colonia Tovar (Venezuela) and Prague.

rock_n_rent

I have to admit that I am stumped by this one.

The word “bar” does not necessarily mean this is in an English-speaking country, as that word apparently is also used in Spanish.

The two English-speaking countries have left-side drive. Of the three cars in the mid-ground, the two parked on the right-side of the street are facing away from us, but the one parked on the left-side of the street could be facing either way – so either we have right-side drive, or this is a one-way street.

From the orientation of the shadows, we are essentially looking straight at the sun, which is blocked by the squarish metal things in the center of the picture. The beach seems to be closer on the right side of the picture than on the left side of the picture. The sun is quite low to the horizon, so we are either early in the morning (which means we are looking roughly due east, and the coast is running northeast-southwest), or late in the evening (which means we are looking roughly due west, and the coast is running southwest-northeast). This only rules out one of the choices, which does not have a coast in the correct orientation.

The sidewalk looks pretty beat-up, there are overhead wires, and the building that can be glimpsed to the left of the “bar” sign is a mid-rise rather than high-rise apartment building. So this is not a glitzy modern beach development, but rather a more faded area, developed perhaps in the 50s or 60s? But we also don’t really know when this picture was taken; could have been taken in early 90s, and the area could have been bulldozed and redeveloped since then.

Of the four choices with coasts running in the correct orientation, two have glitzy high-rise developments along essentially the entire coast, while a third does not even have mid-rise buildings. So that leaves me with one by a very tentative process of elimination – but I have no positive ID. There simply is no distinctive architecture or landmark in this picture.
- mattyillini
  
  Wow! Luis will be proud.

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