Las Vegas Sun

March 29, 2024

CONVENTION CRASHING: NIGHTCLUB & BAR TRADESHOW

At the desk for the Nightclub & Bar Tradeshow on Wednesday, there was a stack of little glossy fliers ("Important - Read Information Below") with rules that you're supposed to follow on pain of or else.

There's a dress code, "business casual," which reads, "No clothing that may be interpreted as promisc uous, provocative or overly suggestive." Halter and bikini tops are mentioned as inappropriate attire.

So naturally when you prove you're over 21, get your wrist stamped and walk into the center hall of the Las Vegas Convention Center to join the maybe 25,000 people inside, you're stepping into an atmosphere of quiet dignity, professionalism and hahaha, whooo, no, not really.

There were go-go dancers.

Heck, even the Perrier booth had go-go dancers, so never let it be said that French fizzy water is too snobby for hot pants and crop tops. The Absolut vodka booth had live snakes slithering around live women dressed as ancient Greeks, if ancient Greeks had dressed in synthetic miniskirts.

But authentic native culture was accurately represented at the booth for Las Vegas Vodka, where the vodkettes lazed about in white hooker boots, fishnets and bikini tops (the after party was to be held at a strip club). "The world's finest premium vodka" costs $26 a bottle, is actually made in Belarus and tastes pretty much like vodka.

Everyone had a vodka to sell. Flavored vodka, save-the-rain-forest vodka, sex-fiend vodka, you name it. And if you didn't have a vodka, you had an energy drink. Hooters had two, a teal one and an orange one. O.C. Energy celebrated California's ditzy Orange County and bragged, comfortingly, that it "contains natural ingredients."

And the vodka people and the energy drink people and their booth babes went back and forth, mixing the two products together, even at the booth for the vodka infused with caffeine.

Occasionally you'd run upon a booth where neon upper-downers weren't being slung by half-naked women. Instead, they'd be like the serious-minded Anchor Brewing booth, which had beer poured by guys who looked like they were all named Jim in the same way that all the vodka guys looked like Chads: Men in double-pocketed work shirts, with gel-free hair and dour faces radiating Jim-ness. I think the one I talked to was even named Jim. He was looking unimpressed.

"Apparently there's a competition for Worst Idea With Vodka and an Energy Drink," Jim says. "Trouble is, the competition is so fierce."

Product 1: Freezer burn

Zeus Juice: 50-milliliter cream-cheese-style tubes filled with slushy 16-proof popsicles. Containers of six wholesale for $5.89 and bars retail individual Zeus Juices for $2 to $6. Comes in strawberry and blue raspberry flavors.

The blue raspberry tastes like battery-acid Otter Pops.

And what's up with that name?

"It's just catchy and sounds cool," inventor Michael Sciucco says. "And Zeus, you know, is the god of all gods, and that's pretty cool."

Also, Sciucco's high school nickname was Zeus. So this is like, his juice.

Yuck.

Product 2: Evidence that mankind is doomed

Ice Rocks, ready-to-freeze, individually packaged spring water ice cubes. The spring is in France. After freezing, just peel back the plastic and plunk. About 10 cents a cube, saleswoman Monika Csiernik says, so maybe about $5 for a box of 48.

Good for people who must have the best ice in their drink and also the fastidious.

"It's good for health-conscious people, because then they're thinking, 'No one is touching my ice.' "

Overheard

"OK, I'm starting to get a buzz. Can we go?"

- One female attendee to another

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