If you look forward to leafing through Creative Loafing’s Annual Neighborhood Issue, with little write ups about some your favorite Atlanta neighborhoods and a list of “Neighborhood Picks”, this is your week to stop by one of Decatur’s regulated green newspaper boxes and pick up a copy.  As this year’s intro states…

For this year’s Neighborhood Issue, we wanted to capture that sense of pride Atlantans have for their neighborhoods. The best way to do that, we figured, was a series of offbeat tours from neighborhood residents that showcase the underappreciated and wacky charms of 23 intown communities. In this issue, you’ll find a late-night patrol in Castleberry Hill with the Crimson Fist, a tour of the Westside on horseback with the Urban Cowboy, a dog walk through Buckhead, a crack-of-dawn workout in Midtown’s Piedmont Park, and more, as well as lists of the residents’ favorite neighborhood haunts.

Here are easy links for the neighborhoods in and around Decatur:

• Decatur/Oakhurst
• Avondale Estates
• Emory/Druid Hills
• Kirkwood

The real estate-centric blog, Curbed Atlanta is doing a fun “Neighborhood Cup” thingy to close out the year, where Atlanta neighborhoods compete in online voting to win a self-admitted “fake” trophy for being generically “best”.

Today’s match-up pits Decatur against formidable rival, Inman Park.  And as of 3:55pm, Decatur is LOSING to Inman Park with only 39% of the vote!  A travesty of the highest degree!  But there’s only been 134 votes thus far, so we can certainly turn this thing around pretty quickly.

So if you care about fake trophies and the most random of bragging rights CLICK OVER to Curbed and vote Decatur into the next round where they will face either Va-Hi or Midtown in a neighborly fight to the death!

FYI: The “Unpossible” in the post title is intentional.  Ask Ralph Wiggum.

Don’t you love it when a random ranker in a travel magazine spits all over your hometown?  From Travel + Leisure, who recently ranked Atlanta the 9th dirtiest city in the U.S…

Many cities that made the dirtiest Top 10 scored well for having a vivid nightlife, cool neighborhoods, or great live music. Alas, Atlanta couldn’t claim any of those in the survey. At least the city has its quality—and sloppy—barbecue going for it.

Huh?  This kick-you-while-your-down statement comes from T+L’s recent “America’s Favorite Cities” survey, which sort of suggests that visitors to Atlanta aren’t aware of our great neighborhoods or music scene.  Also, in case you’re interested, Atlanta also ranked among the bottom 10 cities among visitors for Farmer’s Markets, “neighborhood joints or cafes”, “boutique hotels”, microbrew beer, live music and intelligence.

Ignoring the fact that both residents and visitors alike agree that the city is “dirty” and not environmentally friendly, pedestrian friendly or safe, it seems like we’ve got some PR work to do in the great neighborhoods realm.

Right now the only folks that come to Atlanta, check-in to their plushy business hotels (#8) and sit down in their Aeron desk chair to map out their barbeque (#10) tour around the city.

h/t: Atlanta Business Chronicle