As I buzzed off of McLendon onto Moreland, I smiled. Little Five Points is the true heart of Atlanta. Forget the bigger Five Points, forget Buckhead, forget Midtown-it's only in Little Five Points, in that vortex of alternative culture whirling through the colorful pile of eclectic shops at the crux of Euclid, Moreland and McLendon, that Atlanta truly lets itself be Atlanta.

The main square is a parade of dudes hanging out with yuppies, homeless people harassing executives, hot young gay men and cute old lesbian couples, consignment shops for New Age crystals and recycled old duds, bookstores and bondage shops, teahouses and tattoo parlors, protesters crying, "No blood for oil!" and vendors crying, "Get some hot pizza!"

Glorious.

If you look closer, you can see more-pale, gothy boys whose high collars hide the bites on their necks, tough butch chicks trying to disguise that bit of wolf in their eyes, and New-Agey grandmothers pretending not to be as hale and hearty as their potions made them. Plus a whole carnival of firedancers and piercers, taggers and tattooers brimming over with magic and trying to hide nothing at all. In the Southeast, Little Five Points was the center of the Edgeworld, a brand new subculture rejecting the secrecy of magical tradition and defying centuries of religious oppression, dragging magic kicking and screaming into the light.

Even more glorious.

The Rogue Unicorn wasn't the largest tattoo shop in Little Five Points, but it was the best-and one of only two licensed to ink magic. Catty-corner from the giant skull that marked the Vortex Bar and Grill, the Rogue occupied most of the top of a converted Victorian whose sprawling bottom floor housed the quite decent Make a Wish clothing shop.

The sign for the Rogue was easy to find-a brushed metal unicorn, rampant, that we'd gotten in a deal with the city a few years back when they were trying to push a new artist-but getting into the shop itself was quite the trick: you had to park in the back, climb rickety wooden stairs, and worm round the balcony to the Herbalist's Attic. But-for the view alone-the trees, Little Five, the skull of the Vortex-it was worth it.