If you watched, there was a kind of poetry to the cleanups. Immediately after the Black Keys' played on the alternate stage on Saturday night, the crowd vamoosed, heading to the main stage for Muse, the world’s greatest U2 tribute band, or to the electronica tent for Sound Tribe Sector 9. Even before the event security team, augmented by a few uniformed police, could shoo off the stragglers, a crew of City Wide workers swooped in with empty trash bags. Fanning out from the stage like benevolent locusts, they picked the field clean of every used cup, bottle, can, napkin, lost flip-flop, or stray cigarette pack, tossing their now-stuffed trash bags on to a flatbed trailer hauled by an ATV, and vanishing just as quickly as they came.

The human waste removal process was even more elegant, especially by music festival standards. Kanrocksas fans were blessed with 441 state-of-the-art “Johnny On The Spot” portable toilets, or JOTS, delivered and serviced by a 10-worker team from Deffenbaugh Industries. That number, determined by taking into account not only the event's expected attendance, but also factors like the weather, the male-to-female ratio, and whether food and alcohol were being served, turned out to be overkill. The underwhelming attendance—which peaked at around 35,000 fans for Slim Shady's set—meant that anyone who did go to the festival experienced luxurious bathroom conditions. The entire weekend, in fact, the crowd produced a mere 40,000 gallons of human waste, using only 2,900 rolls of toilet paper (along with, reassuringly, 420 bags of hand-sanitizer). That low volume made keeping the toilets clean a breeze

Karissa Totten, 20, a tattooed blonde and veteran of festivals like Bonnaroo and Wakarusa, was absolutely ecstatic about Deffenbaugh's work at Kanrocksas.

“These bathrooms are so ridiculously clean, it's awesome! I even sat down!” she gushed. “Girls never get to do that! We always have to, like, straddle.”

Alan, her boyfriend agreed: “I walked into one and could actually breathe.”

They weren’t the only ones thrilled with the port-a-potty conditions.

Deffenbaugh's Brian Clawson drives one of dark green septic service tankers used to vacuum out the toilets and haul the waste to treatment. Ruddy, quick-to-laugh, and experienced with large-scale events, he describes the unusually intense love for the festival's toilets shown by one Kanrocksas fan.

“This was at 5:30 a.m.”, Clawson said. “The guy was talking to a toilet. He kept telling the toilet what a great time he was having. He kept saying how much he loves festivals. Then he hugged the toilet.”

Of those 441 units on site, as the law mandates, 5 percent were double-wide, ADA compliant models, and it's heartening to report that very few non-handicapped Kanrocksas fans could be seen illicitly using the handicapped units. Fans did, however, throw stuff into toilets better left un-thrown, like the occasional beer can or koozie. They also dropped valuables: several cellphones that Deffenbaugh crews pulled from the Kanrocksas waste—not to mention some heroin.

A Kansas City, Kansas police officer helping to chase stragglers after Muse shared a rumor that someone had chucked a big plastic freezer bag full of weed, coke, psychedelic mushrooms, Oxycontin, and, yes, heroin into one of the portable john. In other words, someone either panicked and ditched their stash, or just picked the worst conceivable hiding place for it.

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Hampton Stevens