Rooftop Bars in Downtown San Diego
Getting High
Monday, July 10, 2006 by Greg Wynn
If there is one thing San Diegans can count on besides our year-round near-perfect weather, it is that the hospitality industry will most certainly capitalize on consistently beautiful, sunny days and mild nights. The trend of open-air restaurants and bars along the coastline has made its way inland with open-air shopping malls and, more recently, open-air nightclubs in Downtown San Diego.
The popularity of San Diego Rooftop Bars has been growing amongst both locals and tourists and can be proven by the revenues of the brand-spanking new nightclubs of the quickly growing San Diego Gaslamp Quarter. The opening of Petco Park in 2004 would ultimately ignite the explosion of commercial business in the Gaslamp Quarter. The Marriot Gaslamp Quarter foresaw this explosion and took full advantage of the situation by opening the rooftop bar Altitude on their 22nd floor. With and unparalleled 360 view including Downtown, the Harbor, and 90% of the ballpark, Altitude was making a killing before it was even fully completed. This beautifully constructed San Diego lounge bar carries the title of “Best Rooftop Bar in the Gaslamp Quarter” and would become one of the hottest night clubs in San Diego after installing a banging sound system with a resident DJ that could make you dance until you die from exhaustion.
With enough money anyone could put together a great nightclub in San Diego not unlike this, but the secret ingredient here is San Diego weather with a skyline that will make you never want to “pull the chute” on the party and head home. Playing from a different angle, the very chic Solamar Hotel (6th and Island) utilized San Diego’s weather to create a vibe much different than that of a San Diego night club. The JBar, located on the Solamar’s rooftop (4th floor) has created an ambiance resembling a tiki bar in tropical paradise all the while being an upscale San Diego lounge bar located in the heart of the Gaslamp Quarter. When a San Diego summer night is garnished with exotic décor, fire pits, and swimming pools one can have unexplained feelings of comfort and bliss which will keep locals and tourist returning to Solamar’s rooftop bar, the JBar. Across the street from the Solamar lies the all-around most impressively thought out nightclub in Downtown San Diego.
Stingaree could easily be compared to nightclubs in Las Vegas or New York, but is instead located in laid-back San Diego. This three story San Diego night club and restaurant features an open-air lounge bar that will take your breath away. Lined with cabanas for table service, the upstairs area is the perfect spot to catch your breath and chill out before returning to the dance floor. But with San Diego’s dependably mild evenings you might decide to mingle on the rooftop for the entire night. Being that San Diego is one of the fastest growing cities in the United States there can be no doubt that we will continue to see the ever-popular rooftop bar popping up in different and more-inventive ways over the next decade. With climate conditions like these it’s no wonder that local pride runs so deep for San Diego night life.
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