#12: What a Dump!

51 messages · Page 1 of 1 (latest)

alpine pumice
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Sometimes the most interesting things are found in the most unexpected places...
... but sometimes those places are full of trash.
This dumpster is in an alley somewhere, but where?
Where was the photographer standing when they took this photo? Use latitude and longitude in decimal format with three decimals (12.345, -67.890).

Just completed this and really enjoyed it, though it took me quite a while to refine to the exact location and I would love to know what approaches other people are taking or have taken to perhaps get to the answer in a more straightforward manner!

alpine pumice
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🚨 spoilers ||Chose a constraint of not looking at the Bellingcat author's location for this one - started with the waste management company number (and a lucky guess on the hidden one) which focused it to Maryland. The "Howard U" writing on the bin didn't look like a tag so figured it might be a location, quick google returned Howard University in DC, close to Maryland. Not American so a map had to point out that these states are adjacent. Seemed reasonable, but was thrown off because the university grounds appear to be far, far nicer than this and I didn't think DC had these sorts of industrialised areas. Didn't rule out Maryland.

Opted to look at graffiti. Google Lens with various croppings of "GOOF" graffiti found an album art from a DC-based music producer, further supporting DC. Looked for industrial areas in DC with minimal highrise buildings but this proved too broad and difficult. Was also too focused on the university, and the architecture did not match.

Investigated graffiti on dumpster - "Guilt Parade". Google returned a handful of results indicating a small indie band with the name in DC at a similar time period another image of the "GOOF" graffiti was posted, but still no closer to a more specific area to search. Read an article about them playing in hope it would refine to an area that looked similar - article reported them playing at a venue called "Songbyrd Music House". Took a look on Google Maps, saw a big alleyway, streetviewed it - bingo!

I guess the bin was once at the university, but had been reassigned?
||

lofty fiber
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Got stumped on this one but got with a few miles of the location. || finally found the allyway || I am still learning

hard lance
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oh man this one is rough. easy to get the city but real hard to get the actual coordinates.

stable shell
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Yeah I got ||it pinned / street view from graffiti|| but can't figure out the exact coords -- ||seemingly the exact spot i've pinned is 38.909, -76.997|| but striking out on the answer box. Is it a formatting thing?

white plaza
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I have the exact spot narrowed down ||in street view|| but I'm getting the coordinates off by what I'm assuming is decimal points 😭

white plaza
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Woop nvm got it just ||tweak the decimals by a couple of digits||

white plaza
# alpine pumice 🚨 spoilers ||Chose a constraint of not looking at the Bellingcat author's loca...

Similar, ||chose not the do the author lookup, saw Howard U (Kamala Harris went there if I'm not wrong so I'd known about it being in DC) so pinned it to DC|| but this is where we split ways in methodology. ||I did a reverse image search with +Washington DC, and a post came up on Instagram talking about a tavern opening in that alley. Looked up the tavern, street view, and there was an alley near it that looked similar enough but didn't have the bridge thing in view. Moved up and down on street view until I saw that, then it was a matter of finding the graffiti and positioning the street view accordingly.||

void ibex
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|| Howard U showed that it was in DC. A Google lens search revealed a FB-post taken in the same alley and said union market, from there it was easy ||

runic badger
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This one was tough, took a few minutes of wiggling around to get the right coordinates too, nice challenge again thanks.

hard lance
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finally got it. took a lot of brute force looking around.

bleak hedge
meager nest
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Tip for those who think they have the exact spot, but still can't get their answer accepted: ||look very closely at the notation in the example.||

bleak hedge
bleak hedge
# alpine pumice 🚨 spoilers ||Chose a constraint of not looking at the Bellingcat author's loca...

|| Howard U had me looking at the University's area for way too long. How did you manage to make out what the graffiti "guilt parade" said? Well done! I guess I kinda cheated. I did look at the author's location and then the Howard U confirmed the location. Then I used picarta.ai, uploaded the photo, set Washington DC as the location and got the location down to one decimal and then looked around for similar alleys||

atomic owl
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ope, i got it. problem was adding parentheses

cloud python
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I'm deleting this message due to an unspoilered hint. You can spoiler messages by adding || on either side of the text you wish to hide.

atomic owl
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sorry! will remember next time

lusty bronze
white plaza
lusty bronze
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i tried that like 6 times but the () threw me off

white plaza
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Yeah the formatting's one to watch out for

weary oracle
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That challenge seemed to me the most hardest so far. Hated it a few times while doing it and loved it when finished.

robust mason
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I found yesterday the alleyway through a pdf describing this city alleyways, however went to fast in a virtual visit. Went slower today... The hardest challenge for me.

torpid mist
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I just can't 😪 looking at it, dropping a pin from mobile and that's not it.

plucky pine
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I tried ||checking if there was exif data|| and nothing, then i thought ||maybe the company name will give me a clue, but they are all over the US|| I also ||tried reverse imaging with google lens and bing but nothing|| so i'm stuck out of ideas, and yeah i haven't read any of the spoilers here because I don't want to get the answer but I am at a loss since I'm kinda new at OSINT I don't know what else to try

weary oracle
void ibex
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|| The devil is in the details so to speak ||

plucky pine
weary oracle
plush apex
solid magnet
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||this one was really tough, i figured out it was DC quickly but then was just clueless, out of desperation i searched "guilt parade dc" for any lead i could find and got to the songbyrd music centre, thought the alley next to it didnt match and spend like 10 minutes looking for other ones around but it turns out it had just changed in the latest street view - turning it back to 2018 helped me get to it eventually||

hidden jungle
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||Knew Howard is in DC, but this isn't what Howard area looks like. With Google Lens, I found a Tumblr post, maybe by same photographer, from the opposite end of the alley and spent some time looking at a flash of bright green in the background of that photo (thought it was either Extra Space Storage or Holiday Inn Express, both of which use that green). That didn't yield anything but finding that pic and date taken (2015), plus the new-looking green bit in the background, made me think more generally about what industrial-looking neighborhoods in DC have been redone in the past decade, and I knew Union Market was one. Going around on current Street View in Union Market was very confusing, because there are tons of new tall buildings, but I dialed Street View back to 2014 and then found the alley looking very much the same.||

plucky pine
copper sonnet
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||First downloaded the image to see if there was any location data in the metadata (like the first challenge), but came up with nothing. So used Google Lens to see similar images (assumed it was around the DC area given the Howard U graffiti). Found a post on FB from someone who took a similar photo of the alley and used a hashtag of Union Market, so began looking for alleys on GMaps and used streetview to narrow down.||

alpine pumice
plush apex
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|| I got the exact location same with the pic given but wrong answer, i use 3 decimal ||

meager nest
plush apex
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||okay i will try up one, yes i use same format in the sample|| @meager nest

plush apex
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||same issue can't correct answer|| @meager nest

valid canyon
plush apex
raw vine
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easy one ||with reverse img search to a similar-looking alleyway on IG that mentioned a tavern, google maps to find tavern address, then google street view the whole street,|| got lucky ||on the IG post|| it seems

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formatting tips spelled out, un-spoiler at your own risk: ||no parenthesis, with a space after comma||

crude oriole
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So I have the location but am not getting the Lat/Lon answer correct. Any tips?

raw vine
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@crude oriole check my message right above yours and remember ||to only use three decimals||

covert cliff
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This one took me ages. So left it for a few days and then looked at posts here. @admiral was a real help. || I'd done some reverse image searches but hadn't found anything that gave a location. Several images with Goof.Troop so I knew I was in the correct vicinity - Howard U, etc. It was @admiral that prompted me to try again and hey presto - found Union Market. So into Google maps and I focused on looking for a white building with a bridge near it. Trouble was that the latest views didn't show this on street view so I'd eliminated it. However the 2018 view gave exactly the right building so now it was just a case of moving to the position - and rounding up to get the coordinates. || A bit upset I didn't do this one on my own. So far all the others I've done fairly quickly without help. Now to go for the remaining two I've found hard - the || African || building (I've got the right || continent || for this one) and the motorcycle campsite one.

scarlet moth
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What sites/apps are good for zooming in/clearing up the smaller details?

meager nest