Porn Stars Shine in Sin City

Every year as the world's largest gadget show cools off, the exhibition hall merely feet away heats up with the combined power of porn purveyors, the starlets they feature and the lustful gazes of the fans that line up to see them at the Adult Entertainment Expo in Las Vegas.

Half Renaissance fair (read: a lot of bizarre costumes and exposed cleavage), half sex shop on steroids, the show attracted seemingly thousands of men Thursday, just 30 minutes after the doors opened. As the distinct scent of marijuana smoke wafted through the air, fans mingled with industry veterans, lining up for photos and autographs in a snakey maze of giant booths devoted to the lucrative art of selling sex — or at least sexual fantasy.

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The annual fan show precedes an awards show on Saturday for the adult entertainment industry in Las Vegas.

For Terri Ann Daniels, an executive assistant and model at AbbyWinters.com, an Australian site with a primarily American audience, her first visit to the show was a somewhat surprising one.

Shocked by the crowds that gathered at her company's booth — "we're amazed at how popular we are" — Daniels was even more surprised by the coverage; the company showed up on a popular blog within 19 minutes of the show's limited opening earlier this week.

"Since most of the market is in the U.S., we wanted to build up our market in the industry," Daniels said after she and nine of the site's models did a yoga show in a large fake-grass-lined booth in their bras and underwear. "This is the best place to start off."

Although Daniels' booth was noticeable — a large green space carved out in the middle of a show floor inked from floor to ceiling primarily in neon colors — it paled in comparison to the presence of porn behemoths like Vivid Entertainment and Hustler Home Video, which featured multiple porn stars, an occasional mainstream celebrity (Dave Navarro was expected to appear) and various shades of hot pink, red and black.

But the Consumer Electronics Show and the expo don't just share convention space, they also share a similar audience — one that is young and male. CES attendees lined the show's entranceway with cameras in hand, hoping to catch a shot of the bevy of scantily clad women who passed. At the same time, security guards pushed away voyeurs who got too close or lingered too long.