Soyka Cinema

Al,

This area is known as Morningside. Overtown ends in Wynnwood, which ends where the Design District currently resides. The area north of channel 10 and south of Little River is known as Morningside. Miami’s Morningside Park is just a few blocks away on NE 55th Terrace.

Although us old timers ie" “Natives” still use these neighborhood names. Miami’s original neighborhood names have gotten lost over time. It seems that the only ones which have retained their original names are Overtown, Wynnwood, Allapatah, Miami Shores, and Liberty City. Little River has now metamorphisized itself into Little Haiti. Like Little River, some of the other neighborhoods, such as Riverside have been renamed and are known as something else, ie: Little Havana, etc.

The three guys who ran the Mercury/Soyka had been running the Absinthe House Cinematheque in Coral Gables when they opened their second location, the Mercury.

I walked by the Soyka a year or so after it closed and the space was a fitness club or gym. I don’t know what it is now.

The Absinthe, Mercury, and Astor Art Cinema were the places to see foreign and independent films in Dade county in the 90’s before all closed. Today new theaters fill that need: Coral Gables Art Cinema, the three branches of O Cinema, the Bill Cosford, the Miami Beach Cinematheque, the Tower. (The Tower had been around for decades but was renovated and taken over by Miami-Dade College and began showing a variety of foreign/independent fare.)

One of the owners of the Mercury told me back at the time it opened that some of the seats had come from the defunct Riviera on US-1 in Coral Gables near South Miami.