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My father would take us to the World Bathroom Attendant Conference every year, back when they still held it in Portland in the middle of August at the old Convention Center. We went on Tuesdays, the one day the conference was open to the public and free if you could prove Portland residency.
We would walk among the booths, viewing the most recent gadgetry and products that would eventually appear on bathroom counters across the country—cologne, adhesive bandages, gum, and miscellaneous what-have-yous. I remember a vendor who sold a variety of novelty soap dispensers, one of which was a tropical bird that, if you pressed the tail feathers, would release soap from its cloaca onto your hand as if crapping in it.
For that week in August, all the restaurants in town stationed attendants in their restrooms. Some fancy places, like Chart House and RingSide, had multiple attendants. Money flowed through the city. Everyone went out to eat more often than they would normally so they could patronize the visiting bathroom attendants. Everyone seemed to be in good spirits, a joviality matched only by Christmastime. Longtime Portlanders, please feel free to share your happy memories of WBAC Week via U.S. Mail or the website commenting platform.
Unfortunately, as you may know, the WBAC is not held in Portland anymore but rather Sacramento. This August will mark 20 years since it moved.
People have forgotten that the Oregon Convention Center was built to accommodate the growing number of bathroom attendants at the WBAC, its marquee event. The two glass spires, you may not realize, were designed to look like soap or lotion dispensers from a certain angle.
So how did the relationship between Portland and the WBAC sour? It began when the new landlords unreasonably inflated the reservation fee for the WBAC several years in a row. Then, they began scheduling a street artist convention featuring many sleight-of-hand practitioners during that same week, and many bathroom attendants would report missing items and curiously empty tip jars.
Then, the biggest slap in the face: In 1994, Mayor Vera Katz enacted a new city ordinance that required "large gathering spaces" such as the Oregon Convention Center to retrofit their restrooms with motion-activated sinks and hand dryers for the benefit of the disabled.
This, of course, alienated WBAC organizers to such an extent that they left Portland two years later. Funny how the decision to install the cutting-edge fixtures was made in the interest of "modernizing" the facility and city, but was the very instrument that drove away our beloved WBAC.
Dr. Mitchell R. Millar is president of the Olde Portland Preservation Society, which unsuccessfully assisted local activists in the fight against driverless elevators, computerized parking meters and Uber.
Willamette Week