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South of Ponce de Leon, Highland Avenue is a working-class neighborhood with dozens of apartment buildings with homes under $1000 a month. They range in style from depressing concrete panelak to arty Brooklyn-style railroad flat. There's an independent video store here, as well as a tavern or two and a gas station with a convenience store.

North of Ponce de Leon, Highland Avenue is half the namesake of the geographically desirable Virginia-Highland neighborhood (also incorrectly called the Virginia Highlands by hoi polloi), and rentals are generally above $1000. Streetside parking is never sufficient to serve the small shops, including a Ben and Jerry's scoop shop and some independent restaurants with fiercely delicious offerings (I recommend the artisanal Margherita pizza at Osteria 832), and there are a few pay lots available. Don't park and walk away from a shop-owned space, though, as you'll be booted or towed.

North of Morningside Drive, the neighborhood becomes (what else?) Morningside, and shortly thereafter, Highland becomes Johnson, which merges into Briarcliff.

North Decatur Road starts at Briarcliff Road. In this neighborhood, North Decatur is a residential street with nice homes and not much going on. There's a tiny traffic circle at Lullwater with signs warning that the yield signs are enforced by camera, but I've never spotted the cameras or figured out how on earth you'd trigger them. Most of the traffic is east-west here anyway, so there's rarely a need to yield.

East of that roundabout, you'll find a few restaurants (I highly recommend Doc Chey's Asian Kitchen for zingy stirfries and savory spinach salads with buckwheat noodles) and shops, and then Emory University. Emory dominates the feel of North Decatur Road here; on the south side of the road, across from campus, most of the housing is student-oriented.

Beyond Emory University, North Decatur Road turns into a residential main drag leading to the corner of Clairmont, with a shopping center including Publix, Blockbuster Video, Fedex Kinko's, and dozens of small restaurants. Beyond that, you're no longer in Atlanta proper.

Nobody lives on Freedom Parkway. Not by choice, anyway. That's surprising, because it's a gorgeous road with very few intersections and lots of parkland popular with joggers and cyclists. On the other hand, there are no driveways on Freedom Parkway, so there are no homes there either. Yes, a few people sleep in the park, and it's a great way to walk from the Open Door Mission to Samaritan House with a minimum of honking drivers, but it's also a great place to get a bit of sunshine and fresh air.

Freedom Parkway is essentially a shortcut from Ponce de Leon to Interstate 75 and Interstate 85 (they're one and the same in this part of Atlanta) without all the traffic lights of Midtown and downtown Atlanta. If you're in a car, it's not a destination, it's just a way of getting there. It does take you to the Carter Center, though, which continues the missions Jimmy Carter established as president. And if you pay close attention, just as you're about to drive under an overpass, you'll see some "paintings" in the style of the ancient cave paintings of Lascaux, France. Clever!

Caroline Street is in the middle of the Edgewood Shopping District. It might be fairer to say that Caroline Street IS the Edgewood Shopping District; on both sides of the street, you'll see small shops (GameStop, Five Guys, American Deli), and parking lots for large anchor stores (Lowe's, Best Buy, Target, etc.).

Since the Edgewood Shopping District was designed as a mixed-use area, you'll find condos, lofts, and townhomes on the second floor of several buildings, as well as in a dedicated residential area on the east end of Caroline. Homes here are "affordable" by upper-class standards, but still around $200k. If you can swing it, though, you can very nearly do without a car. MARTA buses serve Caroline Street and take you to the train station, and with a grocery store (Kroger), hardware store (Lowe's), general retailer (Target), pet store (Petco), office store (Office Depot), and restaurants like Ru San's sushi and Figo Pasta, you might never need a personal vehicle. There's a Caribou Coffee next to Best Buy, and if you prefer Starbucks, you can get it inside Target or across the parking lot inside Kroger.

Just north of the Five Points MARTA station, Broad Street is home to student-friendly restaurants with patio seating. If you're craving Asian fast food, you'll find it here at Georgia's Best Bento and BBQ (don't be fooled by the name; it's run of the mill Chinese takeout, but plentiful and affordable). Pho is available across the street, as is Kentucky Fried Chicken and Taco Bell.

Rosa's Pizza is the culinary star of Broad Street, in my opinion. My wife doesn't like pizza, but if it's from Rosa's, she will happily devour as much as she can. During lunchtime, the line will fold over itself like a slice of New York's yummiest, then head out the door and down the block. It moves pretty quickly, though, and it's worth the wait.

There's a Starbucks a block away, but Saxby's Coffee is right here on Broad Street, and has the same array of beverages with the additional virtue of not being Starbucks. It's a chain, yes, but at least it's not THAT chain. Right next door, there's a Moe's Southwest Grill. And if you walk along the tiny alley leading to Peachtree Street, you'll pass through a charming bronze sculptural archway that appears to be made of books.

On the other hand, this is the heart of downtown and it's where most of the edible trash is, so you'll likely see someone checking the top layers of trash cans in search of a scrounged meal, or asking you for help so that they can avoid doing that. There's generally a city or GSU campus police officer nearby, though.

Collins Street barely registers on the consciousness of most Atlantans, even though many will drive past it on their way through downtown. It's only two blocks long and entirely within the campus of Georgia State University.

If you're on Collins Street, you probably can't see the sun. That's because Courtland Avenue is directly overhead. This makes it fairly tricky to find on a map, and if you're driving south on Courtland trying to find it, you'll overshoot it. You have to go two blocks southeast on Gilmer Street, then one block southwest on Jesse Hill Jr Drive, then two blocks northwest on Decatur Street. You'll be at street level on Collins Street. Congratulations, but there isn't much to do here.

GSU's Cinefest is a small independent movie theater (free to students, but open to paying members of the public) just upstairs from this corner. On one side of Decatur, you'll find access to a faculty parking lot; on the other, there's an entrance to the G Deck parking facility and the ROTC program office. It's also fairly easy to get onto the railroad tracks from here, if you go up the steps to the ROTC building and follow the path towards the back lot.

Don't actually go onto the tracks, though; it's not only suicidally dangerous, but you're quite likely to be spotted by a junior officer and reported to Homeland Security for messing around with the infrastructure of the heart of downtown Atlanta. I'm not sure whether I'd prefer being hit by a train.

Your best bet for entertainment around here is Cinefest, or any of the free concerts that frequently occur in the nearby campus courtyards during school season.

Monroe Drive extends north from Ponce de Leon Avenue to Interstate 85 (also known locally as the Northeast Expressway). At the south end, you'll find a gas station where you're guaranteed to be asked for change. A mile north of there, Monroe Drive is a swinging hotspot for hippies and the yuppies who pretend to be hippies. You'll find an independent cinema, a Trader Joe's grocery store, a few places to get dinner and drinks (Mellow Mushroom, F. R. O. G. S. Cantina, etc.), and a Rita's Italian Ice with some of the friendliest employees I've met in Atlanta.

If you head west from here, on 10th, you'll find yourself at 10th and Piedmont, the heart of Gay Atlanta. Heading north on Monroe, however, the hipsterism fades into a utilitarian, working-class shopping center, a Red Cross blood donor center (which is undergoing renovations so massive they spill out onto the street, making construction an issue for drivers), and a brief corridor leading up to Interstate 85.

South Ponce de Leon Ave NE (could we somehow cram "West" in there?) is a short, quiet street bordering narrow parkland and palatial homes. It runs parallel to Ponce de Leon (the main drag in the neighborhood), but is about half its speed. Oddly, South Ponce exists in two discrete pieces, looping beneath two different bits of parkland.

Health nuts love jogging along South Ponce and through the park, and lots of people enjoy hanging out, having a quiet picnic or just peoplewatching.

If you come to visit, be aware that you may well be parking in front of someone's driveway. That's a bad idea; they hate that, and residents of this neighborhood get prompt courteous attention from the police. Better yet, just take a minor detour along South Ponce the next time you're in the area. It's a gorgeous nano-vacation.

Moreland Avenue runs south from Ponce de Leon through Little 5 Points (L5P) and beyond. In Little 5 Points, Moreland Avenue is the main drag. There's almost no parking streetside, and most stores will tow or boot your car immediately if you leave the premises. On the other hand, Moreland is so walkable in L5P that you'll wish you'd taken the bus (MARTA route #6) for an afternoon of shopping.

Just south of the tracks, Moreland hosts a shopping center with a Kroger, Target, Barnes and Noble, Office Depot, Lowe's, Best Buy, and other retail meccas. Food highlights here include Ru San's sushi and Five Guys Burgers and Fries.

Go further south and you'll get to Interstate 20.

Go further south and you'll see fast food restaurants with bulletproof drive-through windows. I kid you not. I said to the employee behind the thick Lexan panes that I'd never seen a bulletproof drive-through before, and she nodded and said, "Yeah, you in the hood now."

Briarcliff Road is a long road that continues north from Moreland Avenue at Ponce de Leon, just north of Little 5 Points (L5P). In the mile or two north of Ponce and Briarcliff, you'll find lots of small apartment complexes and a few amazingly swank condos. In the mile or two west of it, however, you'll find lots of people who are down on their luck and not averse to a bit of dumpster diving or panhandling. They do come through here occasionally, but as there aren't many restaurants or other places people congregate, it's not particularly attractive to them.