Someone get Mayor Philip Levine on the phone and tell him the Van Dyke closed more than a year and half ago

Miami Beach Mayor Philip Levine's new campaign ad shows footage of the old
Van Dyke Cafe on Lincoln Road. Someone better call him and
tell him it closed in Jan. 2014...two months after he took office.
(Click image to enlarge)

On his official website, Miami Beach Mayor Philip "Just Get It Done" Levine brags about how he started a media empire with just $500.

In 1990, with only $500 in capital, Philip launched Onboard Media, a start-up business that originated in a studio apartment above the News Café on Ocean Drive. Designed as a port-marketing program for the cruise industry, the company expanded to publish eighty-five in-stateroom magazines and to produce award-winning TV programming.

But Levine's newest campaign ad - rolled out today - is anything but "award winning."

As an announcer talks about how Miami Beach streets were flooded for years while city hall did nothing, we're quickly reassured that "new pumps are [now] returning filtered floodwaters back to the sea and the streets are drier," as the camera shows us a postcard-lovely shot of the wonderful old Van Dyke Cafe.

"All because a mayor cared enough to fight back," intones the announcer.

In 2014, Levine crowed to a magazine writer "I made more money in my first year [of business] than the Miami Herald made in the past 10."

Hopefully Levine paid more attention to the media he was producing back in the day than he does these days.

One wonders how a man who made millions producing "award-winning TV programming" approved an ad that shows an outdated shot of a restaurant that closed more than a year and half ago.

When I showed the ad to political blogger Elaine de Valle, her reaction was "so that means the video of Lincoln Road is STOCK VIDEO from BEFORE the flooding was fixed??? Are you kidding me? This is gold!"