GAK points out that Atlanta has ranked among National Geographic’s global list of 50 “Places of a Lifetime”.  In other words, it’s their 50 cities to visit before you die.

How can Atlanta compete with the likes of Vienna, Chicago and Paris?

NatGeo actually does a pretty good job of hitting the high points: trees, architecture, neighborhoods, food, shopping, arts.  (Emory prof does an even better job in a related Atlanta essay.) The big tourist spots like World of Coke, the aquarium and Turner Field are also mentioned in passing, but isn’t it interesting how most these “must visit” attributes really aren’t things you can buy tickets to, but must experience collectively?

Interesting.

Atlanta’s love/hate relationship with rankings continue.

This time it’s all about the love, since Outside Magazine rated our city the third “best” in the country after ranking on all the usual factors (quality of life, unemployment, college degrees, income level, home prices, weather) and then throwing in some additional factors that matter most to Outside readers – quality and proximity to hiking, biking, running, paddling, and skiing.

In citing reasons for Atlanta’s supremacy over cities that normally crush us with their ocean views and more iconic skylines, Outside points to things like trout fishing in the Hooch, proximity to the start of the Appalachian Trail, cliff jumping in the Palisades, Piedmont Park, LEED-certified Phillips Arena (huh?), and the Brick Store.

I guess we don’t stand a chance in Couch-Potato Weekly now.

The ballot for this year’s Creative Loafing “Best of Atlanta” awards just went live!

Click over to the ballot page on the Creative Loafing site or on Facebook to vote Decatur for all categories!  Best Suburb? Decatur!  Best Beach Retreat?  Decatur!  Best Neighborhood to Live in Without a Car?  Decatur!

But seriously, head on over and vote for all your favorite Atlanta spots/people/things among 5 categories: “Cityscape”, “Poets, Artists & Madmen”, “After Dark”, “Oral Pleasures”, and “Consumer Culture.”   And FYI, you have to fill out a minimum of 10 slots in order to submit your vote.

And if you’re at all interested in showing DM a little love, you’ll find the “best blog/blogger” and “best blogger” entries near the very bottom of the “Cityscape” section.

XOXO in advance.

Saw this earlier this morning, but Eric motivates me to post.

The Atlanta Business Chronicle was the first to report the results of a recent TripAdvisor poll that ranked Atlanta along with both Detroit and Los Angeles as site visitors “least favorite” U.S. city.  However, we did receive props for having the “best accent” (not that THAT helps me at all).

What?  Just because we don’t have waterfront and destroyed our historic fabric AND embraced brutalism and sprawl like it was going out of style?

Come on guys!  What about our highly ironic aquarium?!

Hurry up Beltline…

Yeah, doesn’t feel so great when you’re on the receiving end of random, statistical assertions, does it?

If you are a true “new media” geek, I’m sure this story is so 9:30a this morning, but I just need to do a little wrath-venting… so please humor me.

Business Week recently ranked the nation’s unhappiest cities based on a bunch of strange qualifiers, which included such things as depression, suicide rates, crime, divorce rate and cloudy days.  Yeah, cloudy days.

Atlanta ranked 10th based on this random assortment of weird stats, mostly because of the crime rate (#2).  But whatever.  Congrats Atlanta, add “Unhappy” to your scrapbook of useless, but endlessly blogged and tweeted about city rankers!

The real shocker in my opinion is the #1 unhappy city.  Seriously?  How’s that possible?

OK, sorry about that.  I guess I’m just lashing out because I’m still going through the acceptance phase of acknowledging my general “unhappiness”.  Thanks for the intervention BusinessWeek!

* “Stupid” rankings are based on # of pointless, competitive rankers produced by a publication in a given year/month/whatever.

Creative Loafing’s “Best of Atlanta 2008” is now online, and it looks like Decatur again rated the city’s “best suburb” among its alt-hipster, pinko-liberal, free-newspaper-loving, much-hyphenated readership!  Leave it to those facist CL “critics” to rate Chamblee as their pick for best Atlanta ‘burb.

Also, congrats to Pecanne Log (critics #1) and Blissful Glutton (readers #1) for ranking as the top local Atlanta blogs!

(For Thomas Wheatley’s eyes only:  I THOUGHT WE HAD A DEAL!?!  I provide you with lots of uncomfortably erotic plastic surgery ads for CL and you give DM a little love!  Well I’ll tell ya…that’s the last time I’m entering into a contractual agreement on a napkin with you!  Where’s that # for Sunday Paper?)

(For CL editor Ken Edelstein’s eyes only:  The above note to Thomas was made in jest.  Please don’t repremand him on my account.  There are so many other valid reasons.)

UPDATE: Whit’s End and Wordsmiths also note that they made the list.  Sure…rub it in.