(thanks, Ozone Ferd!)

Poor Jessica. This stupid “Atlanta is a second-tier city” crap will not die down. She wrote a piece for Creative Loafing, hoping to at least balance her Google results in the Great NYC-ATL-Non-Battle-Of-2008, only to a) be outed on that Bloomberg piece in the comments, and b) to find out that it’s part of the Loaf’s cover story this week. Sigh. At least they didn’t quote her by name.

So I read the CL piece, and I think that everyone’s missing the point – in the NYC vs ATL battle, you don’t have to pick just one. Clearly they both have merits. So I’m going to push out the jive, and bring in the love, with my own responses to CL’s two top 10 list ideas:

Top Ten things native Atlantans Love About New York City

1. It’s like living on the Sesame Street we watched as youths
2. Sushi is delicious, plentiful, and significantly cheaper
3. A working public transportation system
4. Bars within walking distance, and taxis for when they aren’t
5. Architecture with a sense of history to it (i.e. buildings built before 1970)
6. Prospect Park
7. The sense of neighborhood you get from living on a brownstone-lined block with a hundred other people
8. Street vendors selling coffee and pastries in the morning – oh man do I miss those guys
9. That one big snowfall a year that seems to take the city by surprise
10. Rooftop Parties / Gardens / Decks , with beautiful views of the City.

Top Ten Things Former Brooklynites Love About Atlanta

1. Falling asleep to the sound of crickets
2. Centralized air conditioning (you have no idea what a huge quality of life improvement this is)
3. The concept of home ownership in a nice neighborhood not limited to the obscenely rich
4. Car ownership is practical (yes, this is a double-edged sword, I know)
5. Friendly idle chitchat with strangers
6. Being able to see the sunset, sky, and stars without having to flee the city
7. Cool modern architecture (i.e. skyscrapers built past 1960)
8. If you find a cool free concert/event, it’s not guaranteed to be mobbed with thousand of other people who also found it.
9. A surprisingly good culinary scene
10. Unplanned horticulture – seeing greenspace doesn’t involve a trip to a park or garden