He's hitting 70. His fabled News Cafe will be a quarter century old on Dec. 2. A print interview with him appears in the Biscayne Times coming out this weekend and at Biscaynetimes.com. Soyka was one of the first in creating energy on Ocean Drive and his opening of the Soyka Restaurant is seem by many as a major step in rejuvenating Biscayne Boulevard.
Video excerpts of the interviews are available through the MiamiWebNews channel on Youtube:
-- Soyka discusses here what gives him "goose bumps" -- a passion for vintage cars that's leading to a new business venture.
-- He talks here about how his status as a technological "dinosaur" led to his decision to keep News Cafe open around the clock.
-- And he tells here how he left his native Israel for New York, where he met developer Tony Goldman at "whiteys' night" at a roller rink in Bedford-Stuyvesant -- a relationship that ultimately led him to coming to South Beach, first to manage the Park Central Hotel for Goldman and then, on a Goldman property at 8th and Ocean, creating the News Cafe, starting in a kiosk and expanding until it is the best known gathering place, with 350 seats, on Ocean Drive.
These videos are part of the new MiamiWebNews channel on Youtube. Among others, you can also see here an interview with Miami author Marvin Dunn about his latest book, The Beast in Florida -- A History of Anti-Black Violence.
