ATR's Got a New York State of Mind

NYC emerges as new #1 ATR town

It had to happen sooner or later. As inexorable as a Yankees October, it was just a matter of time. Whether it marks a shift in our center of gravity is yet to to be known but, in very convincing fashion, New York City emerged as the new top ATR town last week.

Maybe it was our jabs at Elliot Spitzer, or that shot of our sexy interns, but New York City was in the hizzie last week. With 16% of our total visits for the week ending Saturday (3/22), the Big Apple doubled the visits of the #2 ATR town, former topper San Francisco, which is actually in third place; S.F.'s 8.8% falls just behind the 10-spot posted by Sunnyvale.

At #4, Sunnyvale's Silicon Valley de facto sister city, Mountain View, was just behind another former ATR top town, San Diego. L.A., Kansas City and Houston were among the major metropoli showing their love to us.

One town that remains puzzling to us is Columbia, Alaska. As we note in our new podcast, this city shows up BIG in each week's analytics but we can't find it anywhere. Our hunch is that it may be one of those hubs that serves to route Internet traffic coming to North America, but that's just a guess. (Tell us more about you, Columbia.)

Once again our friends in Sweden land on top, with that country our #1 foreign visitor and its capital city, Stockholm, our top international city. Solna in Sweden, Edinborough, Scotland (see what happens when you mention Balmoral?) and Taipei, Taiwan were new additions to our top overseas cities list.

Following Sweden as biggest foreign countries visiting us are Canada, the United Kingdom, Philippines, France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Australia.

Among a list of countries just making our radar screen is Nigeria. With the dollar in a free fall, we thought that, for a change, maybe we could ask someone over there to help us with a small loan so we can send some money to a banker friend, who will pay us back in a week when...(never mind.)

(Photo found on Flickr. The fine print on the back of this card has been updated since it was first issued in the 1960s. Today, it reads: "Please take Isiah Thomas with you when you leave. Thanks.")