A recent snowfall blankets a parked car on Court Street, the main street running through downtown Athens. The heart, drawn in the snow by an unknown passerby, is lit by a streetlight.

"I'm trying to get my four-and-a-half month-old son Isaac to sleep," single mom Janette Daily, 20, said. My dream for Isaac and I is to live prosperous lives. I would like to be a lawyer, and I'd like for him to go to a private school. If I had one word to describe this picture it would be patience. It's alot of work, but I wouldn't give him up for the world."

"It was our closing day show," opera singer Karolyn Lee, 25, said. "It feels good when you sing. It's like a drug. When you hit notes it's an adrenaline rush. I like to entertain people. I want to be an opera singer, a performer..."

"I've been smoking since I was fifteen," David Hartinger, 35, said. "I like USA's, but I usually gather cigarettes from the cigarette urns outside stores and restaurants. When I get home in the evening I like to sit on my couch and smoke. I don't smoke every waking moment but I smoke a lot. Smoking relaxes me."

"Here I am waiting uptown for a customer to call or knock on the windshield for a ride," cab driver Bev Hicks, 42, said. "I have freedom driving a cab. IÕm doing the work at my own pace. It's not the 9 to 5 job where somebody is breathing down your neck. I've had a lot of different jobs. I think everybody has one fun job in their life, and this is definitely mine. I meet all kinds of crazy characters."

Midnight revelers engage in conversation at Club Evolution. Hip Hop music fills the atmosphere, and disco lights flash around the room every night of the week.

"We always sleep like this," Jen DeMuria, 34, said of her boyfriend Louis Zimmerman, 27, and dog Otto, 7. "Last summer I was away, and Otto was with some friends. He ran away and wound up at their neighbors house for a night, and he kept trying to get into their bed. Finally, the lady let Otto have the bed with her husband, and she slept on the couch. Otto panicked, he wasn't home and wanted to be in our bed."

Before sunrise Brent Hanning, an engineer at the heating plant, walks beneath a smoke stack burning off excess heat supplied to the city of Athens.