To wander East Colfax Avenue in the 1970s is to be young, female, angry and ripe,
a June tomato planted early, reddens on the vine, splits open and bleeds. It runs down
your leg and stains the street. You don’t stop, you don’t wipe, you let it remain, to
remind us of the disappeared women, to remember Joann Little, the inmate who refused
the guard in the prison kitchen with an ice pick. You stop to look in a storefront window
between Race St and Vine. It is Woman-to-Woman Bookstore, where more ideas
are born on the stuffed sofa in the basement than there are books on the shelves. Sniff
the fresh carpentry, leave late after Saba’s Judo class, stop by the Satire Lounge after
the dinner rush, sit on the kitchen side, where Linda smothers burritos with sour cream
and green chile. This is a time that exists in our mouths, the melting cheese of desire and
the hot peppers of language. You are licking your fingers, young and inky. You are
fired up Hey, hey ho ho, patriarchy has got to go. You are hawking our monthly
newspaper at 9th & Corona, Big Mama Rag, pages and pages of women on the rag, on the
rage, on the Rag Mama Rag, her words, her glory and her size, the fact that she is alive
and sells for twenty-five cents. An underground newspaper, literally, she has arisen from
a basement on Gaylord Street. Once the FBI paid an informant to burgle that office,
trash files, pour glue in your Smith Corona. It put Big Mama on the front page and
our bad-ass Pat Schroeder pushed Congress to investigate. Now, forget Gaylord Street,
and join the tour, take a right on Colfax with hundreds of others to Take Back the Night.
Pass the porn parlor and the strip joints. After all, it is U.S. 40 in the city, and hey,
there’s Sid King himself, egging on the hecklers, as a pack of dykes steps up to face them
off—lavender tee shirts, tiny tits, tight jeans, uh uh uh uh uh. On your right, the
immaculate Cathedral, as expected, turns its back on us as we march by, However you
dress, wherever you go, yes means yes and no means no. But it needn’t have bothered, as
each cross street disappears as we pass by on Colfax. We lead an invisible parade of
passion and principles that marches still. Something that is a permanent marker on the
asphalt, embossed on the avenue itself. It stains your fingertips after you read it,
you can’t get it off you, why would you want to, why even try?
