[5] It was first produced by Teatro del Sesenta in San Juan, Puerto Rico, in 1980 at the Teatro Sylvia Rexach; toured to Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic; and, opened the Joseph Papp's Latino Festivals of 1985 and 1986, where José Félix Gómez and Idalia Pérez Garay played the title role with Darysabel Isales playing "Doña Pura Buenaventura";[6] it was also produced by the Teatro Musical de La Habana, Cuba; produced by the Compañía de Teatro Nacional de Venezuela (1986 & 1991); Lolyn Paz produced it three times: in Caguas, Puerto Rico (2003),[7] with Yolandita Monge in the lead female part,[7] San Juan, Puerto Rico (2004), and Fort Lauderdale, Florida (2004); Lima, Peru, starring, among others, Camila Mac Lennan.
[8][9] The lyrics of the song by Blades[10] describe the namesake of the song as he walks down an unnamed avenue in New York City, explicitly mentioning how Navaja dresses, what kind of shoes and hat he wears, his dark glasses (worn so that no one can tell what he is looking at), his shiny gold tooth, and how he always hides his hands in his coat pockets so that "no one can tell in which hands he holds his knife."
An unmarked police car slowly cruises down the avenue, and the prostitute steps into an alley to have a drink - it is a slow day and she has not had any clients.
Meanwhile, the prostitute takes a gun out of her coat pocket and is about to put it in her purse, so that it stops "bothering" her, when Navaja attacks her with the knife, laughing and the gold tooth "lighting up the avenue" as he plunges the weapon into her.
[10] A drunken man stumbles upon the two dead bodies, picks up the gun, the knife, and two dollars and saunters away singing off-key about the "surprises that life throws at you.