Florida- If you happened upon a bunch of greasy men in gold chains and busty, barely clad women last weekend, those were probably the movers and shakers of the Internet porn world. They congregated at Hollywood’s Westin Diplomat for the Internext Expo, a biannual convention that usually jumps between South Florida and Vegas.
The event was closed to the public and the media, but New Times reporter Ashley Harrell tried to gain entry through the temperamental founder of Screw magazine, Al Goldstein, who said he might be able to dig up an extra pass for her.
That wasn’t all. Goldstein, who is 71, was also hoping, based on Harrell’s phone voice, that there might be some relationship potential.
“I’m not looking for somebody to fuck, just somebody to spend time with,” he explained, before warning: “I’m very difficult.”
Like she didn’t already know. This is a man who may be best-known in these parts for having in the backyard of his former manse on the Intracoastal in Pompano Beach a giant statue of a hand giving neighbors and passing boaters the finger.
Harrell made it clear that her goal was to follow Goldstein around at the convention rather than sit down for a formal interview. After all, there was potentially juicy porno-networking to eavesdrop on, not to mention tension-filled auctions of adult-oriented domain names.
Goldstein, who once ran for sheriff of Broward County (and next to the current officeholder, he’d be an improvement), wanted to meet at noon in the lobby. Harrell figured that meant noonish, considering she was meeting him at the site of the convention. She certainly didn’t think he’d get all self-important about having to wait a few minutes. He is, after all, a self-proclaimed “nobody.” Screw went under long ago. Goldstein lost all his money and that Pompano house. Now he’s blogging on Booble.com, a porn version of Google.
His tumble from smut royalty notwithstanding, he damned well expected to be met promptly at noon. So when Harrell had to stop to get batteries for a tape recorder, it was a deal breaker.
“Who do you think I am?” Goldstein screamed into the phone when he was informed that the meeting would have to be pushed back 15 minutes. He was also ticked off that Harrell had waited a couple of days to phone him after his “webmaster” gave the go-ahead for a story.
“This is a fiasco,” he said before hanging up on Harrell.
After arriving at the Diplomat, our game reporter tried to get in the front door but was turned away. Apparently not just any riff-raff can get into a porn convention. So she called Goldstein again and tried to reason with him.
Click.
Ah, but it wasn’t a total loss. Harrell watched from the stairs as porn stars came and went, their Expo passes dangling precariously over cleavage, their skirts falling shorter than their underwear.
And those auctioned domain names? Gold standard latinpussy.com took the top prize at $135,000. Meanwhile, poor internalcreampies.com went cheaply, if you ask the ‘Pipe, for just $1,500.