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AVN 2026

Another January Awards season has passed with the AVN Adult Entertainment Expo and AVN Awards returning to the Virgin Hotels Las Vegas. Similar to the Hard Rock in 2013, the Virgin staff and security made some adjustments to hosting after several common complaints in the first year, and the expo ran more smoothly this year.

Adult Entertainment Expo

The Expo was divided into three rooms. One room had large booths featuring studios like Brazzers and Sex Like Real and platforms like Loyalfans and MyFreeCams. One focused mostly on adult novelty companies. The third and largest room had a mix of studios, platforms, talent agencies, and other random vendors. Brazzers had the largest booth with lines that you had to cut through just to navigate in that area. Angela White and Abella Danger had the longest lines of fans waiting at the convention.

Sabrina Bishop interviewed performers on the floor for IAFD, but random fans kept trying to get her attention and talk to her even though they did not know who she was. Sabrina is a great interviewer showing natural rapport with whoever she was talking to although there were a couple fangirl moments that surprised me.

Sabrina Bishop, Girthmaster, Sara Loverays, Mikayela Miller — Sabrina with Girthmaster, Sara Loverays, and Mikayela Miller

Convention photos on Flickr

The Nightlife

The best part about AVN week is meeting friends that you only really see on an annual basis, often in an informal setting like at a party. One person, Mia Rose, I hadn’t seen in 17 years.

Dorcel threw a great party to promote their movie, Strip. I was happy to see Riley Reid there after an absence of three years. She again greeted me with, “It’s been so long!”, and I reacted again in confusion because years become a blur when you’re old like me.

Riley Reid and Anna Claire Clouds — Riley Reid & Anna Claire Clouds

Photographers were being kicked out of the AVN White Party, but I was too busy drinking and recording Anna Claire Clouds‘s new boobs with my brain for anyone to complain about my camera.

AVN Awards

I had attended 6 or 7 AVN Awards in person mostly working behind the scenes. My first was in 2006 when I accompanied Ariana Jollee along with several other members of AdultDVDTalk down the red carpet at the Sands. Twenty years later, I had the privilege of the lovely Emma Sirus taking me to the Awards. The red carpet went smoothly for me as a guest compared to when I photographed it in 2023. The Awards production crew was surprised and delighted to see us. Everything was a blur, and Emma fed me ice cream afterwards.

Several performers came up to me and asked me where my camera was. Some even asked me when they could see their red carpet photos while the red carpet was still going. Maybe adrenaline caused these conversations to be on autopilot.

Right before the Awards started, people like to take their photos on stage. As I led Emma to the stage for a photo with her co-nominee, other people stopped me to ask me to take their photo for them with their phones. After I finished taking this photo for Olivia Jay, I tried to compose a shot for Emma. Realising that Olivia Jay was in the frame taking selfies, I asked Olivia to move slightly to her left. Olivia petulantly screamed at me that she was there first. When she was finished with her selfies, she walked by and bumped Emma for good measure in front of everybody else.

Can’t have an AVN week without some drama.

The Awards themselves started earlier than usual and ended reasonably before midnight. Wiz Khalifa threw an inspired set, and the winners were all deserving. An ad by Joi promoting AI elicited boos from the crowd, and its placement at an awards celebrating performers was curious.

On a Closing Note

After finishing up my 22nd AVN week, I don’t know how long I can keep doing this. AVN is the most grueling event on the adult industry calendar and is geared for the young or the young at heart. I am neither. Most of the pornorazzi that I knew when I first started are dead, and the ones that are still around are jaded or bat shit crazy in their resilience. Even though I have made adjustments to my approach, I am plenty jaded and my resilience is waning.

I have met thousands of performers and made lifelong friends in and around the industry through these events. Many that I don’t view from a perspective of a fan so it always confuses me when people ask me for an introduction. I will miss them when I am done.

Like multiple winners at the AVN Awards, I would like to thank Mark & George for their hospitality the whole week, Dorcel for letting me crash an awesome party, and Sabrina for patiently keeping my short fuse in check with the idiotic attendees around. Shout out to my boys, Bono, Jeff, Danny, Shawn, Sammy, and Swine and my muse, Lily Labeau.

Thank you, Emma, for being one of the kindest people I know and being a great Awards date.

… and Summer, Sona, and Annaleigh, thank you for being magical.

AEE 2025

AVN’s Adult Entertainment Expo (AEE) moved to Virgin Las Vegas after a two-year stint at ResortsWorld. Virgin was somewhat familiar grounds since AEE was at the former Hard Rock Hotel & Casino from 2013-2020. Beyond the familiar layout, the atmosphere and security was more similar to ResortsWorld. Newer talent complained about a strict dress code that was consistent with those of previous years.

AEE was spread across two large rooms while the Adult Novelty Expo and Internext were in separate areas. Vixen and Fleshlight hosted a pop-up store outside of the convention. Brazzers had the largest and most popular booth at the show with lines for Abella Danger, Angela White, Lily Phillips, and Violet Myers waiting for more than an hour.

Photo Gallery on Flickr

Congratulations to Anna Claire Clouds for winning Female Performer of the Year at the AVN Awards. I first met Anna while sharing a smoke with Don Juan Demarko at Exxxotica Denver in 2018 and joked about the industry need for three-part stage names. It has been a pleasure to watch her growth over the past years.

Congratulations also to Jeff Vanzetti and Peter Van Aarle for their long overdue inductions into the AVN Hall of Fame. Without them, there would be no database for the obsessive fan that need a name or number to the person they just fapped to. I only knew Peter for a brief time, but he was a mentor and ideal as a historian for the industry. Jeff had the technical know-how to put IAFD together and the temperament to manage a motley group of contributors that followed. I am glad that the selection committee recognised and gave them their flowers.

AVN Expo 2024

It took a while, but I was distracted by personal life stuff. This year’s AVN Expo was smaller and cheaper than last year’s wallet shock of a show. Resorts World is still a very expensive venue when it comes to food and drinks, but moving the show off the same week as CES made it more affordable.

As such, most of the industry was staying at the host hotel rather than the backup hotel. The show itself was hosted in a smaller area with less exhibitors compared to last year. That was fine because I didn’t have to move around as much. Even though there was less attendance due to the lack of CES crossover, the crowd density remained the same. At some point, I was jostling in a river of crowd traffic with my camera banging against people including one person that was carrying a motorcycle helmet for some reason.

CC Doll, Aria Valencia, Sky Pierce, Rissa May, Harley Haze at Hookup Hotshots

The best booth at the show was a new one from Hookup Hotshots. The beautiful starlets signing there were accessible and there were backgrounds to shoot them against without a crowd. Angela White, Abella Danger, and Violet Myers had the longest lines at the convention, and Brazzers seemed to have the busiest booth.

I did not party too hard this year with all of the distractions and was more busy walking girls back to their room since there were so many predators out and about.

I stayed away from the awards red carpet and watched The Royal Rumble instead. Congratulations to the deserving Chanel Camryn for winning Best New Starlet though.

AVN Week 2023

Adult Entertainment Expo

The AVN Adult Entertainment Expo returned to Las Vegas this month after a 3-year absence due to the coronavirus pandemic. This year, it was concurrent with the return of the Consumer Electronic Show, something that hadn’t happened since 2011. Because of crossover attendance, this was the busiest AEE that I remember but also the most expensive. Prices for rooms, food, and transit have jacked up since the three years.

The host Resorts World is huge, and I saw families with children walking around the facilities which did not happen when AEE was at the Hard Rock. Because of this, there was a more restrictive dress code that people were expected to adhere to when leaving the confines of the convention. Given the size and complexity of the show and the limited production staff, it was definitely a success. Sure, there were quirks that can be ironed out at future shows but that happens at every new venue.

Besides the adjoining Adult Novelty Expo, AEE featured three main halls. One focused on production companies and webcam platforms, one focused on the gay side of the industry, and the last was mainly talent agencies. At any given point of the day from opening to close, you could find new people to meet walking back and forth between the halls. With the production company booths, most talent had 4 hour signing shifts while the talent at the agencies booth and the AVN booth averaged around 2 hours.

Outside of the actual expo grounds, Vixen rented space in the Resorts World mall to host a pop-up store featuring their clothing line and contract stars. Riley Reid appeared for two days exhibiting her Eighteen Plus clothing line, and the overall line to get into the store lasted about 3 hours.

Expo photos on Flickr

AVN Awards 2023

So weird thing happened to me. After the end of the expo with drink in hand, I was trying to find a ticket for IAFD spokeswoman, Alex Blake, to walk the red carpet for the AVN Awards. When the nice producer saw that I had a press badge for IAFD, he handed me a press badge to be behind the Awards red carpet. I was not prepared to shoot the Awards since I had not charged my camera and flashes after finishing the expo, and I was already 30 minutes late for the call time.

After sheepishly explaining to Alex what had happened and cancelling two shoots, I ran up to my room to throw on my suit, grabbed my camera and strobe, and came back down. The only space that was available was at the end of the carpet what was only half covered by a wall background. I shared my spot with two guys, Jay of Jay’s Playhouse and Bobby of Girlsincars or something similar to that, who were great guys as we coordinated our shots rather than compete with each other. I took about 3-4 shots per look and tried not to miss anyone, but several people skipped us since we were the end of the line and they just wanted to move on.

The carpet started at 5:30pm and kept going until 9pm with 750+ walkers. It does not need to be this grueling. They tried to limit the walkers to nominees, but the problem is that there are too many nominees! Most categories have around 10 nominations each (some with multiple performers), but the fan award categories can have 20-30 nominations with no overlap with the other categories. This Oprah approach builds interest but is too overwhelming on the red carpet. Perhaps the fan awards should be separated into another event.

Awards red carpet photos on Flickr

As for the Awards themselves, they went pretty much as predicted. We were correct with several of our projections. I was pleased as fuck to see Kira Noir win Female Performer of the Year; not just because of its historic nature but that she is one of the nicest and best people in the industry. Congratulations.

Miscellaneous

Because of the expense and limited room blocks, it seemed like more talent stayed outside of Resorts World so you wouldn’t see them at night outside of the expo. I was reluctant to leave Resorts World out of laziness so I mostly stuck to the events that were hosted there.

I mostly hung out with my boys at IAFD and AdultDVDTalk along with IAFD spokeswoman Alex Blake. I would like to thank Mark Spiegler, Don Juan de Marko, Tim Von Swine, and East Coast Talent for their hospitality at several events into the late hour.

Thank you, Liz, Chanel, and Alex for making magic with me.

A Look at The 1989 Winter CES (Adult)

Now that 2023’s AEE/X3 shows are behind us, let’s take an even further look back at the 1989 Winter CES show.

Photographer John A. Mozzer (who is also known around these parts as performer Alan Adrian) shared a bunch of photos he took around the 1989 Winter CES â€“ when the adult exhibitors were tucked away on the second floor of the Sahara, and private parties were where you rubbed your elbows.

We can’t recommend enough getting lost and clicking around John’s meticulously captioned galleries over on SmugMug â€“ it’s a cornucopia of the NYC downtown scene (and elsewhere) peppered with some familiar faces and a really great eye for the candidâ€¦

Click on the picture below to see the rest of the CES gallery:

Source: John A. Mozzer’s gallery of 1989 Winter CES, Adult Exhibitors, Las Vegas