Grant Park in the rain

Today William, Steve, Stephanie, and I went to Grant Park to explore the neighborhoods. We started of at Octane and then randomly walked around. We had hoped that it would stop to rain but in fact the rain got stronger, so that we had to return earlier than planned. However we still got a couple of nice shots I believe, showing parts of Atlanta that are quite different from, say Midtown or Virginia Highlands.

Below you can see a map of the area that we explored. Octane is right in the middle.

It might have been the weather but somehow the area felt we explored felt quite depressing. Longish streets…

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with junk left-and-right of the streets. At first you might think that it is simply deserted and abandoned but then you always find clear indicators of “recent activity”. For example in the shot below, you can see the dumped tires and in the background there is a junkyard(?) with more tires. Not exactly what you would want to consider a nice view. But then, in the back, the red text says that you can get your christmas tree there. These things always feel very weird to me: you have an environment that feels hostile, dirty, rundown, deserted, and, generally, not a nice place to live. You might even think that nobody is living there anymore. But then, you will occasionally find these indicators of human live and people that somehow still do care.

Similar in the next one: in all this sadness, there is always someone trying to make things look nice or interesting.

At some point we passed by a parking lot where a couple of EMS vehicles were parked. The lot was heavily secured with electric fences as you can see below. Why? My best guess is because people break into the vehicles hoping for some drugs.

Given that many of the cars were missing lights or doors etc., I suppose that these were our of service and parked there to provide spare parts.

We continued walking and ending up in some not so nice areas. Look at the next shot. You might think: wow, that must be deserted. But then you see the Obama/Biden sign at the top of the house. You see that the city of Atlanta is still providing a trash can and you see a car in front of the house. Is it really deserted? The house is in absolutely terrible condition as you can see: covered windows, rotten wood, the roof has a hole that has been fixed rudimentary…

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A bit further down the street it does not look too good either. Handwritten “keep out” signs make it clear that guests are not welcome.

On a less depressing note, while walking around we were quite surprised by the density of German cars; mostly (very) old Mercedes’ and Volkswagen’s (VW). In particular, the old VWs seem to be quite popular.

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Some more shots below in the gallery:

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