LAS VEGAS—It's weird coming back to this place, so familiar for so long. The AVN Expo first came here more than a decade ago. Much has changed, but the layout is the same. The dark corners with rock-and-roll memorabilia have been replaced with sunny southwestern tans and reds, the casino ceiling is now a grid of interlocking triangles hanging over new pathways between the slot machines and table games. The casino bar has been moved close to the entrance, a circular indentation in the ceiling the only evidence that it was ever there.
At 11:30, the fans waiting for the noon opening have made an orderly line winding through the casino, with crossings kept clear by polite security guards pointing out that this is the middle of the line, it continues over there. The trade entrance is busy, with security checking credentials and tote bags, and marching everybody through metal detectors... I enter between performer Lauren Phillips and Nexxxt Level talent agent Andre Madness... At the My Free Cams booth, the traditional white couches are camouflaged with MFC-branded pillows and blankets.
Lauren and I meet a friend of hers from FanCentro, we go out for coffee. In mid-cup, a guy from a blog asks to interview Lauren. She agrees, and walks over to the camera. Their backs are to me, but I can see the camera when they move so I'm in the background. I can't hear any of it, but later she tells me that the questions were on a piece of paper and "disorganized. Not linear enough for my taste. That's the way my brain works. He kept asking about doughnuts, I thought he was really talking about orgasms. You know, 'O'"... AVN veteran Sherri Shaulis gives me a hug, laughingly tells me, "People are asking me where stuff is. I don’t know."... As we walk back to the show, Lauren sees the Vixen Media Group boutique, says "I didn’t know Vixen was here"...
Coralyn Jewel setting up her sign and pictures at the AVN booth. We met 10 years ago on a three-day Luc Wylder shoot. "That was when I was just getting started"... Ricky Johnson: "It's been a good vibe. The girls are having a good time. I like seeing people interact"... At 12:09, the Brazzers booth already has a long line behind the sheer back wall of the booth, enforced by stanchions and security guards... There's a discernable difference between the veterans, with their life-size banners, headshots, and ready smiles, and the newbies, tentative, shy, with photos from a photo lab... Emma Rose says hi, gives me a hug. She has roses at her booth and she's wearing rose perfume. Go figure...
Shay Sights, at the LoyalFans booth, in a modest knee-length black dress that wouldn't be out of place at a cocktail party... Jewelz Blu: "My favorite thing at the convention, besides meeting all the fans, is seeing the fans who watch all my live streams and my cam shows. The face-to-face interaction is very special"... At the Load Boost booth ("C*m like a porn star") a cornhole board is repurposed as a ring toss with silicone dildos as targets. Winners get a 6-inch rubber sperm with the company logo.
T-shirt: "Hot Girls Drink Tequila"... Alison Rey: "The show has been really, really good. It's so good to be back at the Hard Rock/Virgin. It feels like home. I was only signing for one day this year, so my fans came to see me in a nice stream. It was awesome seeing everybody. And today I was working on the Adult Time podcast. I could wear warm, comfy clothes for the very first time at Expo. It was nice to play both of my parts this year: talent and social media"... People playing Twister at a booth...
Remy LaCroix in rapt conversation with a fan at the 101 Modeling booth...Blake Blossom: "Everybody in line has been super kind. They like my Fleshlight. It's been fun to have people see my Fleshlight in person and interact with it. It's interesting to see how they choose to play with me. It's been great. I recognize a lot of my fans from last year and the year before"... "Long day, but hey, we're here," Bella Blu says. "I have a smiley face, I can talk to people, I'm good." A pendant hanging around her neck has a tiny 3-D image of Coco Lovelock: "She had these made for her friends. There's another one with her in her pretzel pose, with her ankles behind her neck"...
Abella Danger and Angela White have the high-profile corner positions at the Brazzers booth, with Kira Noir dead center. No wonder the line is so long... At the Brazzers podcast booth, Ricky Greenwood, Tommy Pistol, and Mick Blue are talking with a moderator. They flag down director/performer Danny D to join them... Laney Grey always has a line of fans.
Elizabeth Skylar, in a cutoff Hookup Hotshot T-shirt, says "I couldn't wear this," flipping up the shirt to show pasties under a fishnet top and pink leather harness. "I had my boobs out," she adds with a laugh. "I feel it's better now than it was last year. I like that there are four different rooms. Everybody has a good spirit"... Even new talent has dedicated fans: At the Nexxxt Level booth, Yaya Gingersnatch tells me that a fan brought printed screencaps of her videos for her to sign. "That blew my mind. He had me sign for him, not for him to sell later. Just me and my body parts"...
Veteran performers Kiki Daire and Katie Morgan are also at Nexxxt Level. We take a moment to catch up... A guy with a shirt that says Randy West Productions. I don’t know if it's the retired performer/director who passed away last fall or the mainstream announcer I know from my game show days. I didn't ask... There's a guy at the Elegant Angel booth who's a dead ringer for Bill Margold in the '70s.
I was waiting for him to call me "Kid"... Rissa May talking animatedly with a fan at the Jules Jordan Video booth... Max Fills good-naturedly grousing about being dragged from a different booth by a fan to get a picture with him and Hailey Rose, and letting it drop that they recently got engaged. "This year I'm really excited to be signing for Brazzers," Rose tells me. "The line is so much bigger than I expected. I really do this for the fans, I've built such a good community and relationship with so many of these guys. They're the reason I'm here, they're the reason I do this. It's incredible to have that kind of support, to feel that support and to feel that community. I can't even compare that to anything else. Actually, some guy proposed to me today. I was very sad to say I had to decline, because I'm already engaged to my wonderful guy." Fills adds that they were pleased to have met couples who are fans...
T-shirt: "Smile If You Wanna Have Sex"... Jeffrey John Hart, Holly Randall and Suze Randall at the Elevated X booth. Holly asks "Have you met my mother?" and we are introduced. I tell Suze I've been a fan of hers for a long time—"Longer than we'd like to admit"—and I remember when she flashed the entire NBC network. Suze looks at me, puzzled, until I say "On the Tom Snyder show" and she smiles in recognition. Holly never heard that story and asks me to repeat it for the documentary crew following Suze around... After that, Hart tells me about another project he's working on, and asks me to keep it quiet... Anna Claire Clouds watching Jules Jordan and Tony Rios getting interviewed by a Fuse reporter. We chat momentarily before she's asked to join them... I get stopped and asked to be interviewed by a video blogger from Taiwan. Sure. He gets my name wrong twice before I show him my credential so he can read it. That's okay, I probably would have stumbled over his name too.
People start to drift out as the 8 p.m. closing time nears. The White Party is tonight. The Saturday show will start earlier, at 11 a.m., but it closes at 4 p.m., so people can prepare for the AVN Awards presentation that evening. It's not over... just almost.
The front desk employees and casino cage personnel—many of them veterans of the hotel's previous incarnation as the Hard Rock—see my credential and tell me they're glad Expo is back, sharing their memories of previous years... The room numbers at the Opal Tower jut out dramatically from the door, like the titles of a '50s crime drama...
Dog-friendly rooms have a small fake door marked K9... Each room has a doorbell, which does double duty as DO NOT DISTURB when it lights up red and HOUSEKEEPING REQUESTED when it lights up green from switches just inside the door... The bedroom is separated from the entry by a large slatted door, which closes by itself if you don't put a shoe in front of it... All the room lights are controlled by wall switches, including a master switch that turns on all the lights at once. And a motion detector that turns all the lights off when the room is empty. Or you're reading in bed... The thermostat controls include a button that toggles the temperature readout between Fahrenheit and Celsius...
Coming into the Awards Saturday evening, I see Max Fills gallantly escorting Hailey Rose to the ladies' room... Outrageous Scene nominee Leya Falcon, who lives in Las Vegas, has brought her mother. "Another year. We made it." They promise to save me a seat in the auditorium... As we wait to be admitted to The Theater, I chat with Gal Ritchie. She's never been to Las Vegas and is loving it. I tell her to look for the seven-foot cymbal on the ceiling just inside the auditorium door, and her eyes get even bigger... Mick Blue and Annika Albrite in the auditorium. Haven't seen her in a few years, since she retired... Two colleagues text me they tried to save me a seat, but it didn’t work. Oh well... I catch up with Joanne Cachapero. We chat over a drink, while we're both scanning the crowd for something interesting to note... Leya texts me: "Meet me at the bar, we have a seat for you." Cool...
The show starts with the Hall of Fame and In Memoriam, and then goes straight into the musical guest. That's a switch. People stand up, watching the performance on their cell phones... Comedian Steph Tolev scores with a line calling this "The biggest room in Vegas with no STDs"... Cherie DeVille wins MILF Performer: "I'm just an old lady trying not to break a hip"... The almost-five-hour two-disc magnum opus Fuck Angela wins Star Showcase, surprising nobody. Accepting the Award as the producer, Angela talks about how she loved early-2000s gonzo porn and got the cameras and directors from that era to shoot it... Chad Alva, winning Best Actor for Alive, says one of his passions is music and thanks his dad "for being a real alcoholic"...
Co-host Blake Blossom is called from backstage to receive Girl/Girl Scene with Octavia Red. Genuinely surprised, she calls Red "one of my best friends" and interrupts the play-off music so Octavia can talk, too. When they hug before going offstage with their Awards, I lip-read Octavia telling Blake "I love you so much"... American MILF wins Outstanding Comedy and the entire cast troops onstage. Director Kayden Kross, pushed to the mic, says "We have enough people, I hoped I wouldn’t have to talk"... When Gal Ritchie wins Best New Starlet, the front rows stand up, cheering. "I used to watch this show at home and now I'm here on this stage"... Anna Claire Clouds, winning Best Anal Scene, says of Zac Wild: "He put a whole bottle of lube up my ass and I squirted it all over the place. My asshole — I didn’t know what it could do until this year"... Wild concurs: "There's nothing better than oiling up a beautiful woman and fucking her in the ass"...
Axel Braun presents Outstanding Directing – Individual Work to Ricky Greenwood for Gold Diggers. Greenwood hugs Axel first, before saying "It's not only me" and name-checking his crew before thanking Axel, saying "I grew up watching his movies and now I got the Award from him"... Angel Windell, winning Best Boy/Girl Sex Scene for Nine from Kink Label 3, calls for "a round of applause for Chris Diamond's cock" before saying "Four years ago I was homeless, now I'm a responsible porn star"... Anna Claire Clouds makes a return trip to the stage winning Female Performer of the Year, saying "I couldn't be more honored," and thanking her friend performer Chloe Surreal: "I did over 100 scenes this year, and every single time I would question myself, she was there to encourage me" before continuing, "To all of you: honestly, we're some weird little family. We might not know what everyone's going through, but we are all going through it together. I might not know you, but I know you. And I hope that this industry can bring you as much joy as this has brought me. I just love you guys so goddam much"... Envelope in hand, Isiah Maxwell teases the final Grand Reel announcement, saying "We're gonna wait five minutes" before announcing Gold Diggers...
After the Awards, I run into Max Fills and Hailey Rose in the casino watching the passing parade. "We didn’t win anything, but she was on the cover of a winning DVD" Max says. "I was so excited" she tells me... At the Awards center, I meet up with Zac Wild, and I proudly tell him I recognize him even though his (SiC) tattoo is covered by his coat sleeve, unlike the last time I saw him. "It's Latin, it means 'thus'" he tells me. I tell him I knew that because I took Latin in high school, and as we chat about our histories with the language I tell him about a publishing house that has been putting out books with Latin and English on facing pages for more than a century: "I just finished Caesar's Gallic Wars and I started in on Plautus." He takes down the name of the company on his cell phone...
After recording some more interviews to pass along for the official coverage, the trophy room is emptied out and I head down to the casino-side restaurant The Kitchen for a bite before going to bed. Axel Braun and Sunny Goldmelons writer/director Eddie Nova spot me reading the menu sign and we chat informally for a moment before I get two more quotes for the official coverage...
Axel says he's surprised at his win for editing because he had retired, but recut Compulsion for a Director's Cut... When I go inside The Kitchen, I see agent Mark Spiegler at a large table with many of his clients, Brad Armstrong with a few friends, Chad Alva waiting for a table, Mike Quasar with a large red box ("I won for a lesbian movie I don’t remember directing"), and Anthony from OC Modeling just leaving a large table full of dishes and empty seats.
New Hall of Famer Leslie Winston comes out, carrying a large red box—I get another quote—and then Katie Morgan comes in with a group of friends including some correspondents and producers from Naked News. She invites me to join them and we take a large table, the conversation roaming from obscure forgotten mainstream movies of the '70s to the shutting down of naturist facilities in Southern California ("Only a nudist would say going textile," one of the correspondents says), to the new releases coming from Russ Meyer's filmography and the history of "porno chic"... The food and conversation flow until a bit after 4 am, when we finally start throwing $20s into the folder to cover the check...
The bedside clock radio reads 4:25 as I walk into my room. I haven't been up this late since... the AVN Awards last year.
And so to bed. What time is check-out?
Photos by Tod Hunter, Toby Acuna & Mari Blue
For more photos from the 2025 AVN Show, click here.
