David’s contribution to Margo’s eulogy…

“I first heard about Margo St James in London from San Franciscan, Funky Paul, who, with Margo, had spray painted a fire-hydrant gold on Grant Avenue. He told how they ran away in different directions when chased by a cop.

I met Margo shortly after I arrived in Marin from London in 1973, appropriately enough as the result of a Whirling Dervish dance in Sausalito, where I met a woman who took me back to the “cloud hidden” hideaway of Druid Heights opposite Muir Woods - where Margo was living in a “non-deliberate” community that included philosopher Alan Watts and lesbian poet Elsa Gidlow.

Margo and I got off to a quick start. She invited me to live there and asked me to design the Coyote button. “See if you can include a vagina!” was the brief. And I did.

I told Margo about a poster I had designed in London for the, Policeman’s Ball; a fundraiser for the Oz freedom of speech trial and partly as a result of that conversation, the Hookers Ball was invented.

The Ball became the high point of the San Francisco social scene for seven years, the premier event of the year from 1973 to 79, and for which I designed many posters.

Margo was a force of nature, a whirlwind of creativity. Her zest for life was an invigorating impetus to get things done. We were never lovers, but I loved her dearly.

We used to run together down the valley from Muir Woods to Muir Beach. Around the house life was lived sans clothes. We’d get up at dawn and hunt for chanterelles in the wilds.

She took me on as a student of San Francisco. We would start the day off at Malvina’s Coffee house, just round the corner from where she had lived on Grant Avenue. We ate at Hamburger Mary’s. Driving around in her White Whale, a huge ‘64 Chevy, she drummed up support for Coyote. We’d visit attorneys, including Melvin Belli with his famous office skeleton standing watch. One night we broke into attorney Terence Hallinan’s house through a back widow to get into a party there.

Margo was an artist herself, an accomplished painter, but recognized that her skills as a communicator were the way to go.

Margo was a good friend of writer, Paul Krassner. She was one of his three, “Holy Whores”. and it was he who encouraged her to create COYOTE. With author Tom Robbins telling her she was the Coyote Trickster, Margo had a name and a cause, and with her zest, she flew with it.

It was writer John Stevens who, a year after Coyote was founded, came up with the words, “Call Off Your Old Tired Ethics”.

When Margo had lived on Grant in the sixties, she was acquainted with a beat cop whom she invited in for coffee, but when she refused his come-on and he hooked up with her roommate, he busted Margo as a madame and she was found “guilty!” because as the judge said, anyone who knows what a “trick” is, is a whore. Margo may have been paid for sex on occasions but was never a full-time hooker. Later she appealed the judgement and won after she’d studied up on law and presented her own case. It was because of this bust that she had difficulty finding a job and that decriminalizing prostitution was to be her calling.”

- David Wills

Margo St. James with Roger Somers' woodwork in the Big House. Druid Heights, Mill Valley.

Photo by David Wills.