with Auren Hoffman
January 12, 1998
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Down and Out in Las Vegas
711, 666, and laser urinals by Auren Hoffman "Vegas Baby! Vegas!" we yelled for half the long car-ride to Vegas from San Francisco. We were going to Comdex, the pocket-protector-high-tech-gamble-fest-with-too-many-people-and-no-interesting-products-convention. So we packed our van with 10 mega-nerds, 80's music mixes, magazines, potato chips, beef jerky, chess, cards, dirty jokes, Bill Gates gossip, and Snapple and we headed down south to the sands of Nevada. It was an adventure -- to say the least. My first time in Vegas but I since I've seen Bugsy, Casino, Swingers, and Leaving Las Vegas, I think of myself as an expert in absentia. After we get to Vegas we check into a spacious hotel suite. The room was beautiful, close in proximity to all the major hotels, and clean. We couldn't believe we scored such a great room during Comdex -- but then we realized there were two problems. The first was that we had 10 people -- luckily there was lots of floor space. The second was that the room number was 666! This really freaked people out. I admit it, I was scared too. The room had a weird aura and the air seemed a little heavier than one would expect. It had a delightfully moderate temperature, even warm, but my feet were strangely cold. In fact, one night my feet were so cold that they really hurt and I had to run them under hot water. After a night of party-crashing and stuffing my face with shrimp cocktails and California rolls, I was not ready to go to sleep on a full stomach. So I did what anyone else in my situation would do -- I went to the bathroom. It was there that I came upon my revelation -- all Vegas public bathrooms have automatic flushers on the toilets and urinals. I couldn't believe my eyes. It was awesome. Even the sinks had laser sensors. After spending over 15 minutes testing all the laser sensors for the flushers (they ALL worked), I walked out of the bathroom in high spirits. Not being someone who enjoys gambling (in fact, I find games like craps and blackjack utterly boring), I decided to spend my time wisely. I had already completed the Douglas Coupland book I had brought with me, so there was only one thing left to do -- go on a quest. I knew my destiny lay in finding the poor urinal that still had a manual flusher attached to it. After scouring the bathrooms of all the major casinos, I figured my best bet would be to go into some of the more low-end joints. To my surprise, even they had laser sensors. I went in restaurants, government buildings, gift shops, and seedy bars. I made some of the quickest bathroom stops in history (and I broke the Guinness World Record for the number of bathrooms visited in one evening). I was running out of luck and I had to resort to more drastic measures. I pulled out my Comdex media badge and begin systematically interviewing each passerby. In only a short time, some biker dudes pointed out a place across town that they claimed had old-fashioned-level-pulling-urinals. Since I could not take their word, I trekked across town to see for myself. Sure enough, I found a bathroom there that had lever-pull flushers. I was so happy that I put a quarter into the first slot machine I saw and out came $14 -- which almost covered my cab fair back to the hotel and room 666.
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