Intersection

World’s biggest orgy moved ahead of record attempt in Las Vegas

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Erotic Heritage Museum
Photo: Mikayla Whitmore

Another day, another new location for the potential world’s largest orgy. Just hours before today’s record attempt in Las Vegas, organizers announced that the climactic event of the Sin City 8 weekender—initially to be held at an Embassy Suites near the Strip—was being bumped from the most recent host spot, the Erotic Heritage Museum, to an undisclosed location in the valley.

TheBlast.com later reported sex club Green Door as the new venue. The event was scheduled to begin at 4 p.m., end by 6 p.m. and include roughly 1,200 registrants, which would beat an unofficial 2006 record in Tokyo by 700 people.

Publicist Kristy Auli, who represents Menage Life, the Denver-based organizer of Sin City 8, said at a press conference earlier Saturday at the Erotic Heritage Museum that the move to a secret location was due to “unforeseen events,” and done to protect the “security and privacy of our guests,” the latter a concern to some registrants after news of the orgy attempt went viral.

Auli, Menage Life owner Pearl Derriere and Erotic Heritage Museum executive director/sexologist Victoria Hartmann wouldn’t elaborate further on the venue change. When asked whether local government or authorities exerted pressure on or denied appropriate permits to the museum, Derriere did say that with every Sin City event she produces in Las Vegas, “There’s more permitting, bureaucracy and licensing involved.”

Both Derriere and Hartmann assigned some blame to what they see as an increasingly conservative and sex-negative Las Vegas, which earlier today saw sex workers marching in red against the ongoing stigmatization of their work and recent federal laws written so they might conflate sex professionals with sex traffickers. “There’s an attempt to clean up the city and that started to happen before the change in the political climate,” said Hartmann.

Promoting sex positivity and destigmatizing consensual sexual activity is a guiding principle of Menage Life. “[The publicity] has been a double-edged blade,” said Derriere. “We want to change the world, but we have to tell the world.”

Also during the press conference, Derriere maintained that she informed Embassy Suites of all the events slated to happen during Sin City 8, but parent owner Hilton Hotels & Resorts only “pulled the contract” after Stephen Colbert lampooned the orgy attempt on the May 11 episode of Late Show With Stephen Colbert, telling Menage Life that it wouldn’t “represent the brand.” (A Embassy Suites manager previously told the Weekly that the hotel nixed all Sin City 8 programming when it “became fully aware of the nature of the functions intended to be held at the hotel.”) Derriere wouldn’t confirm if Menage Life would sue for breach of contract.

Even the Artisan, which hosted last year’s Sin City 7 and planned to host May 31’s Meow Mix party, ran into permitting issues, according to Derriere, who suggested that next year’s edition may not be held in Las Vegas or be named Sin City 9.

“It’s really hard to do a Sin City event in Sin City,” she said.

Auli said confirmation of the unofficial record—which would be verified by a tally of waivers submitted before today’s event, as well as a count by independent media outlets Playboy Radio and The Blast—would be shared in the future via its website.

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  • Organizers praise "an amazing event" for the Sin City 8 weekender despite multiple venue changes, vow to try again in 2019.

  • The event was previously scheduled to take place at Embassy Suites during the Sin City 8 weekend.

  • The current record is claimed by a 2006 Tokyo event in which 250 women and 250 men gathered to do the deed. “We will blow ...

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