Georgia State University, the NYU of the South !
I'm not going to disparage you guys for being in downtown Atlanta, although I'm preferential to a traditional rural college campus atmosphere. There's a lot worse downtown city locations. Actually downtown ATL is alright to me. The crime I always hear about is mostly around the Georgia Tech campus. Heck, Athens GA has homeless drunks and thugs too ! One trip down Baxter Street is all one needs to see that. There's Russell & Brumby Hall dorms on one side of the street and projects on the other.
Of course UGA & GT do have the Varsity, "what do ya have, what do ya have" !

Just five blocks from where the site's server is.

But seriously ... watch your *** down there. The other side of the connector is somewhere I won't go unarmed ... and even around 55 Park Place there are enough vagrants from the other side of the connector to make you think twice about not being armed.

(07-04-2013 05:16 AM)DawggoneEagle Wrote:  The crime I always hear about is mostly around the Georgia Tech campus.

Home Park, due northeast of GT campus, is rough. A lot of students try to rent places there on the cheap while attending... but that's a rough neighborhood. And the bad guys know that you're not carrying since it is illegal to on campus in the state of GA. So they'll roll up off the interstate, curb park in their blacked out SUV, and roll up on your *** as you walk toward home park. Take your laptop, cash, phone, and headphones at gunpoint and they're out of there.

But the other side of the connector from GSU is another world. If you're in the neighborhood right around Clark Atlanta and the GA Dome ... your ANNUAL odds of being involved in a violent crime are nearly 1 in 3. Coming out of a parking deck used heavily by GSU people (I think it backed up to the Music School?) to bring my server into the facility at 55 Marietta, a black guy just standing in the street as I'm wheeling my hand trucks by said something to the effect of "What the hell are you doin' 'round here Cracka?". He leaned forward like he was about to start following me. I stopped and rather obviously racked my glock I had in my cargo pocket to chamber one up. He immediately took a few steps back and leaned back into a building and had nothing further to offer.

Home park outside of GT campus is bad. The connector across from GSU is another world. It legitimately competes with some neighborhoods in Chicago and Detroit and Philly.

The host for this site is in 55 Marietta. And it's a nice building, but they run it like a military compound. You cannot gain access without an employers' secure ID badge or signing in and being escorted by somebody who is a credentialed tenant of the building. That says a lot about the area.

Its a city like most big cities and it has its pockets of hell. Five Points, Peachtree St south of Underground and Marietta St at Forsyth St qualifies. That whole area is a do not enter at night alone area. English Avenue is another within Downtown and Midtown. Students from GSU, GT and the AU Center are particular targets because they know they have laptops and ipads and iphones. You can walk 2 blocks in downtown or midtown and walk into or away from trouble. Parkway and Ponce de Leon just came to mind. Walk two blocks north and you're near half a million dollar homes. Two blocks south and you're getting jumped. I found Macon and Savannah and even Athens to be the same except Atlanta is much larger so more sketchy areas because we have more neighborhoods period. There is still more crime occurring in Atlanta suburbs than ITP. Most of the crime that occurs can be attributed to victims not using very good common sense. Walking around any of the aforementioned campuses at night while talking on your iphone isn't a good idea. There have been 3 murders in East Atlanta/Kirkwood in as many weeks. Two were people leaving bars late night. At least one was a victim cutting accross a sketchy area as a shortcut. Know what you're doing, know where you're at, don't leave anything in your car, get a house alarm. You would be surprised how many people own a home in the city with no security alarm. Its a staggering amount. In 20 years inside the city I have had my car window smashed twice (Grant Park and Midtown) and both times I had left a laptop bag on the back seat. The only time I have had a gun pulled on me was on Panola Rd in Lithonia way outside the city. But I was walking down a dark stretch after getting off the bus at midnite and was listening to my walkman when someone jumped out the bushes and robbed me. Stupid on my part. Of course, I was a student at the time. :)

Atlanta is a city like Detroit. Not like most big cities.

Like most big cities. There aren't big cities anywhere without major crime. London, Barcelona, Dallas, it doesn't matter.

I had to head to the Fulton County courthouse for a real estate transaction and while I was walking a couple of teens smashed the window of a city vehicle and grabbed something out of the front seat. Needless to say, I did a steady sprint to get where I was going. If they wanted me, they were going to have to run by a lot of slower folks.

My best advice is to avoid downtown. But if you have to, just run Forrest Gump style.

LOL