Guess the City

looks a little more west (plains) than midwest tbh

I'm trying to understand what I'm looking at on the right, between the tree and our location?

some kind of old gas pump?

feels like nebraska

maybe kansas or one of the dakotas.

Seems like many medium-sized midwestern towns have a historical museum with displays similar to the first pic.

the picture's above the fold now so i can't verify without loading this insanely huge thread but iirc it sure looks similar to The American Historical Society of Germans From Russia in Lincoln, NE

relinking the first pic:

https://i.ibb.co/M8MfYwJ/cmas.jpg

2nd pic: there's a sign in the distance with a longish word on it but it's too small to read - other than that... No idea? Are all the buildings very low because they're near an airport?

In the first pic I’m looking at the photo of a street scene that seems to be labelled “[-illegible-] music store Santa.” Next
To the music store on one side there is a sign that could say Taft’s and in the other one a sign that might say Kuhn.

There’s an old theatre in Lebanon,OR called Kuhn’s, but there was also a chain of “variety stores” called Kuhn’s that started in Columbia,TN that was a precursor to Big-K so this gets me nowhere.

2nd pic: there's a sign in the distance with a longish word on it but it's too small to read - other than that... No idea? Are all the buildings very low because they're near an airport?

we're on a road that's going up -> a bridge over something that ends in H ?

(nope - the name of the river is on a green sign with white letters in North America)

https://i.ibb.co/zxYxgt8/ara.jpg

Back in the back in the streets

I don't know if this will point the right way but:
https://www.google.com/maps/place/549+N+Harrison+St,+Davenport,+IA+52803,+USA/@41.5251595,-90.5789161,17z/data=!3m1!4b1!4m5!3m4!1s0x87e2349bf7cc63ff:0x1115893076e96c4d!8m2!3d41.5251555!4d-90.5767274

(Davenport, Iowa). Now to find the indoor place...

Aha! https://www.google.com/maps/@41.5214872,-90.583515,3a,75y,172.51h,90t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipOPSfvfoeYpRnHe2KiE8vBOZ5nHTVJFetsvuBi4!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOPSfvfoeYpRnHe2KiE8vBOZ5nHTVJFetsvuBi4%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya95.375145-ro-0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352

yay! nice one

ngl, it has been an ambition of mine to get one of these one day!

How did you find it? Are you familiar with Davenport?

nope, I googled 11'8 bridge and it turns out there's a really famous one in North Carolina, but it's not the one in the picture.
Then I googled "overheight vehicle route" and found a Flickr picture of it! so I got lucky for sure.

An unexpected route to it for sure. Surprised this one took so long!

There are some places that I don't "get" because why would I want to even think about that place, and Davenport, IA, is one of them. What an absolute pit.

well done though

so the sign in the Santa/street/piano picture says "Gifts" - and it's "Schmitt ??? - ??? Santa" - meanwhile, the family pic is "German Family Christmas" and the three landscape/tower drawings aren't labeled.

https://www.google.be/maps/@41.5214872,-90.583515,3a,41.1y,186.89h,76.73t/data=!3m8!1e1!3m6!1sAF1QipOPSfvfoeYpRnHe2KiE8vBOZ5nHTVJFetsvuBi4!2e10!3e11!6shttps:%2F%2Flh5.googleusercontent.com%2Fp%2FAF1QipOPSfvfoeYpRnHe2KiE8vBOZ5nHTVJFetsvuBi4%3Dw203-h100-k-no-pi-0-ya283.5709-ro-0-fo100!7i8704!8i4352

and it's a Santa costume, no famous pope/cardinal

Gifts, omg.

This one was wild

how the hell did you end up in a place like this, cherry blossom? :-)

the costume looks more like Saint Nicholas though - who comes with gifts on December 6th here in Belgium and looks/sounds suspiciously like Santa Claus (Sint Nicholas -> Sint Nikolaas -> Sinterklaas / Santa Claus)

https://i.ibb.co/kHjf8zR/orph.jpg

I think the vertical KUM might be EUM as port of RKO Orpheum (which is todays Adler)

Haha I was wrong about more or less everything so I am likely wrong about this too but I’m clinging on to this being Schmitts Music Store Santa.

in July 1913, relocated to 111-113 W. Third St. Schmidt Music Company continued in business in Davenport until 1964.

which is next to the Adler

I was pretty sure that I read "Schmitt Music Store Santa" in that photo caption. I found a Schmitt Music store website with all of their store locations, which are all in the Midwest, and I checked many of them for a historical museum. But they have no current location in Davenport, IA, so I never looked there!

Ok since I guessed one not so long ago, here's today's:

https://i.ibb.co/7yzZ7rW/Screenshot-2021-11-16-at-11-20-39.png

Thinking Israel

All the cars are white. Feels like in Israel they wouldn't all be white, but then it is a small sample size. And it could be near an airport

Black and white striped poles

yeah I was thinking that most of them are taxis perhaps. Airport or big hotel on the right.

Direction signs with blue background and white text: not Israel?

definitely Middle East though

Man is wearing a Kippah I think?

I'm not finding blue traffic signs like that in Israel (or yellow buses) - maybe I'm not looking in the right spots

Thought it might be Tunis, but I did some wandering and didn't find many signs that were similar.

i think it's somewhere moister than that. getting pacific vibes, philippines maybe. can't find those traffic stripes though

those are canary island date palms fwiw so maybe north africa a little more likely that middle east (although obviously they're all over the world at this point)

are we seeing letters on the right? something like FAH ?

I think I found some striped poles

All non-white cars are forbidden in Ashgabat (Turkmenistan) but I don't think this is it

Striped poles for both street signs and lights are very distinctive. Googling around I found striped poles in Kuwait. The blue sign with two indecipherable lines of text - wondering if this is arabic script on top and Roman script underneath

The striped poles I found were in Haifa, near the airport but not had a chance to look properly