OK, I think we’re at last caught up with all the still-Unidentified locations. It took a while, and many hints, but UI 40 was finally pegged as the Illinois State Police Station in Des Plaines, IL. What’s significant about this location is that, before the building was made into a police station, it was a high school: specifically, Maine North High School, which was where the movie The Breakfast Club was shot. That’s the exterior of the school where the kids are dropped off for their detentions. The library, however, didn’t exist: it was a set built in that school’s gymnasium. (BTW, my favorite bit of Breakfast Club trivia is that the film was shot entirely in sequence.) I’m rather surprised that this one remained Unidentified for so long; I thought my hints were staggeringly obvious.
I’m quite pleased that UI 41 went Unidentified for a while; this one was one of favorite installments of this series so far, and I’m glad it didn’t get pegged in hours like some other ones that I thought might be stumpers and then, well, weren’t. If you watch a lot of summertime ESPN, then you see the occasional baseball game or highlight reel from a game at Boston’s Fenway Park; and aside from the Green Monster, what’s the most notable thing you see in shots of that park, facing left field? Yup: it’s the giant Citgo sign! (BTW, there’s a gorgeous aerial shot of Fenway in the companion book to Ken Burns’s Baseball teevee documentary that includes the Citgo sign, and I was stunned to see just how far from Fenway that sign really is. The shots from inside the park, showing the sign looming over the left field wall, make it look like that Citgo station is pretty much right across the street from Fenway, but that’s not the case: you could pretty much stick another Fenway Park between the actual Fenway and the Citgo sign. Here’s a good aerial photo that shows how distant that Citgo sign really is.)
Finally, it only took one hint for UI 43 to be pegged as the Pike Place Public Market in Seattle. So congrats to the winners; give yourselves all one hundred Quatloos.
However, UI 44 is still Unidentified! Hooray for me! This location may, or may not, figure in an upcoming movie. I won’t know until the movie comes out, but I suspect at least one scene may take place here, although whether there’s an establishing exterior shot of this locale will be unknown.
And now, at long last, the new installment:
Where are we? Rot-13 your guesses!
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