Still looking for a hotel room in San Diego? Despite Chris Butcher’s cruel hoax yesterday, they are hard to come by. However, if you have $450 a night to blow, you may enjoy swinging off the chandeliers at the new Ivy Hotel :
With rooms starting at $450 a night, this city’s newest hotel is keeping company with some grand dames of San Diego County: Four Seasons Resort Aviara, Hotel del Coronado and the US Grant.
But the only thing strait-laced about the Ivy Hotel is the leather-covered, corseted columns in the lobby.
The 159-room, $90-million property could pass as Playboy Mansion South, from the skin-baring cocktail waitresses to the $3,000-a-night specialty suite with king-size bunk beds, a group shower and, ahem, a fireman’s pole.
“We wanted something a little voyeuristic, a little seductive,” said Michael Kelly, the Ivy’s co-owner who has made his fortune buying and selling depressed assets. “It’s an adult playground, but it’s not cheap.”
The LA Times business section article goes on to talk about the increasing Meatpackification of San Diego’s Gaslamp district, which is sure to reach fever pitch as the cast of Stargate SG-1 descends to bring much needed glamour.
In the last seven years, convention business has more than doubled; 574,000 convention attendees came last year, many of them executives who have expense accounts to burn on swanky soirees, pricey rooms and hard-to-find wines.
In the Gaslamp Quarter, bottle service — once reserved for velvet-rope clubs in New York, Vegas and Los Angeles — has “completely changed” San Diego’s night life in the last couple of years, said Carl Winston, director of San Diego State University’s School of Hospitality and Tourism Management.
“The whole bar scene has gotten tremendously sophisticated here and tremendously expensive,” Winston said. “People are buying bottles for $500 and $600 for the evening. There seem to be 25- to 35-year-olds who don’t mind paying several hundred dollars to entertain friends.”
If this seems alarming, we still plan to do things the old fashioned way: buying a $12 bottle of Smirnoff at Ralph’s and sharing it with our close pals in our hotel room. Tradition, it’s a precious thing.
[Thanks to David Seidman for the link.]
I read that in the Baltimore Sun and was shocked. Why do I think the Dominatrix Comic Launch Party will be in this hotel?
God bless the Ralphs (or is it Vones) by the con. I can get Sushi and a bottle of red wine there for the price of a hot dog at the center.
It’s only a hoax if I’m in on it :-/