Viva Les Amis looks at one local café as an example of a national trend: The loss of the mom and pop shop. The film explores the 27 year history of Les Amis Café – a sidewalk café that served almost three decades of eclectic customers and staff. Through the eyes of Newman Stribling, once manager of Les Amis Café, now cab driver, the film delves into the long history of Les Amis, and reveals the present: Les Amis Café replaced by a Starbucks.
Austin, Texas, is an Eden for the young and unambitious, from the enthusiastically eccentric to the dangerously apathetic. Here, the nobly lazy can eschew responsibility in favor of nursing their esoteric obsessions. The locals include a backseat philosopher who passionately expounds on his dream theories to a seemingly comatose cabbie, a young woman who tries to hawk Madonna's Pap test to anyone who will listen and a kindly old anarchist looking for recruits.