I have never been in Atlanta. But I've heard much about this city. In addition to being the largest city and capital of Georgia, it's the financial center of the American South, with such companies as Coca-Cola, Home Depot, UPS, Georgia-Pacific and Turner headquartered there. Atlanta has a certain kick to it. Maybe it's more happening than New York. It's Hotlanta. I was left scratching my head today, wondering how Atlanta got the Olympics in 1996 and New York was denied them for 2012. Granted, it was facing other world-class cities like London and Paris and an Olympics in New York would never really be about sports anyway. In a city when all anybody cares about is the Yankees, I can't imagine the Olympics really making a big splash, no matter how many different languages are spoken in the elementary schools of Queens. The Olympics would probably force New York into doing things that it always was promising us it would do but never got done - develop the Long Island City waterfront, build the 2nd Avenue Subway, maybe even get working on the Freedom Tower. Well, I don't know about the last one but as for the first two, it's hard to delay when you know you've got to be done in 2012. If Athens could do it in time, maybe New York could too. But all this talk is pointless now because London got the Olympics. Then again, New York didn't really need them. For Beijing in 2008, the Olympics are a way for China to say it has arrived. New York arrived a long time ago, and it doesn't need the Games to keep proving that.

New York is the left breast of the world. Manhattan is the areola, and Midtown, where I work, is surely the nipple. My building is right above Penn Station (America's busiest train station) and Madison Square Garden (the world's greatest arena). It stands across the street from Macy's (world's largest store) and two blocks from Empire State Building (world's most famous living skyscraper).

Have you ever wondered what would happen if the price of gas rose proportionally to real estate prices? I wonder how much we would pay per gallon.