Miami is a dangerous city, but a soothing one as well. As I followed 95 north, I turned toward the darkening skyline of Miami’s downtown. The colors of the night city are brilliant. It’s a city that shines at night with skyscrapers crowned in neon. Some dyed indigo, others crimson or spring-grass green, all glowing sharply against the black sky. The dominant color capping the buildings of downtown Miami is a vivid blue, a perfect blue, outlined as sharply as a Swiss Army knife against the night. It’s a city of crowded beach bars where women go almost naked outside bars, seducing tourists to drink and eat by the sea. To the casual observer, it’s a peaceful place on a summer night. But the careful watcher can catch the darkness of its spirit. Under the softness of the night there lies another city. A city clothed in black, under whose velvet veneer lies a world of drugs, and prostitution, and murder. Tonight, however, it bathes in its night colors, blue and green and peaceful under the black sky.

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