New York City is a public transportation city. People generally take the subway, bus, New Jersey transit, Path, or Metro-North train to and from work. If they’re lucky, they walk. It would be rare to hear of anyone living in Manhattan and driving to their office *also* in Manhattan. I’ve been working here almost six years, and this is unheard of to me.

Atlanta, on the other hand, is a driving city. The city does have what appears to be a very clean public transit system called the MARTA, but no one seems to take it. All of my clients at the agency I am here to visit drive everywhere, and especially to work. My colleague who came down on this trip with me said she wanted to try being a “local,” so she took the MARTA from the airport into Midtown Atlanta, where we are staying. She elicited a number of laughs when she told the office this, as they informed her that no “local” would take the MARTA. Okay, then, someone please tell me who takes the MARTA? Someone has to be taking it and keeping it running!!

Another thing that is foreign to me – a large number of our clients have gotten their cars broken into. One of my clients just had his car window smashed a week ago, and his work Macbook air and iPad were stolen. Another client’s car got broken into twice last summer. These are the things that would shock a New Yorker. We don’t own cars up there, so what would we know about car break-ins?