Since one particular day back in 1979 when my friend Steve casually mentioned, "I was listening to so-and-so's new album while I was in the shower today, and…" I have been incredibly jealous of the fact that he had his entire house wired for sound.
This was not common in 1979, but since he worked as a DJ at one of the popular gay clubs in Phoenix at the time, it also wasn't particularly surprising.
It wasn't until many, many years later while living in what was to be my last San Francisco apartment, that I was finally able to realize my dream of being able to have decent sound in the bathroom while I was showering. I ran wires from my rig in the bedroom down the hall and into the bathroom, where they connected to some small Infinity satellite speakers I'd picked up. When all was said and done, I was admittedly kind of disappointed; it sounded great, but a lot of the anticipated thrill of doing this had disappeared during the intervening years and it got to the point that my downstairs neighbors were dropping so many snide comments about hearing 20 year old disco first thing in the morning I eventually took it all down.
When I moved back to Phoenix I wasn't able to run the wires in a way that could be as easily hidden as they'd been in San Francisco, and an extended period of being out of work forced me to sell the gear I'd been using so I gave up on having hi-fi in the bathroom.
Fast forward to 2012 or thereabouts and the arrival of Bluetooth technology into my life.
Now I have a speaker smaller than a power strip that pumps out great sound from my iPhone at a moment's notice. No running wires or having to mount anything on the wall. Tunes in the shower anytime I want.
It's magic.