Miami has always been home, so maybe that’s why it feels so foreign, to revere the sounds of an urban oasis in the evening.

But it’s a sensation that can be hard to experience, and even trickier to describe.

It doesn’t happen as readily on the Beach, but rather where most of Miami actually lives, in the heart of the thing. You really only run into it when you drive through the city just after dusk. Perhaps there’s the tiniest bit of a temperature, maybe even some wind. Like a lover gently nibbling on your earlobe, if that lover’s breath were exactly 76ºF.

Maybe you have on a light jacket, a classy little sweater. The music playing through the cars stereo is something light, but with a sexy tempo, because somehow, everything about this city at this exact moment is some kind of sexy.

You pass street lamps, mostly lit, some with intermittently flickering bulbs. You glide through stop lights, more carefully than you usually do. And the intoxicating rhythm that permeates the very cement of Miami sweeps you up, and suddenly feeling and lust for life gets caught up in your throat, tightened and inaudible. You keep driving, and see the many people out of their homes walking these throbbing, pounding streets.

It’s Friday, you realize. So, of course, you are overcome.

The pulse of life here begins to build around Thursday evening, resulting in a crescendo that crashes down around the ears by late Sunday afternoon. You realize what a good day and time it is to be alive, pulling into the Publix parking lot, a smile creeping up from deep inside. Your throat slackens some, breathing is easy and free.

Now, go on ahead, and get yourself one of the best sub sandwiches of all time.