207 at The Hard Rock Hotel San Diego, CA.

Show Review
Plateaus
at 207 in the Hard Rock Hotel San Diego, CA.

This is a roped off "velvet rope" area for the talent at 207 San Diego- fully lit.

  I will just put it to you honestly that I had never been to a show at this location- some may recall the prior ocupant, Rande Gerber's Sweetwater Saloon, which was closed rancorously in mid 2009.  It's the bar area that is just opposite the convention center.

 Personally, I find the Gaslamp to be sublime in the sense that Edmund Burke in his groundbreaking 18th century philosophical essay, A Philosophical Enquiry Into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and the Beautiful (1757)

This is the Bar Area at 207 at the Hard Rock Hotel in San Diego, CA.

  To quote the Wikipedia summary of that essay, "The sublime has a causal structure that is unlike that of beauty. Its formal cause is the passion of fear (especially the fear of death); the material cause is equally aspects of certain objects such as vastness, infinity, magnificence, etc." (WIKIPEDIA)

  Typically people understand the word sublime to mean "characterized by nobility, majestic." (FREE DICTIONARY)  But to really understand the meaning of calling something sublime you have to understand the DEEP FEAR OF DEATH WHICH THE CONTEMPLATED OBJECT INSPIRES IN THE VIEWER.

  So then, yes, the Gaslamp is sublime because it is vast, and infinite, and the contemplation of the subject inspires the passion of fear/the fear of death.  Within this subject, The Hard Rock Hotel is a primary locus of "The Gaslamp."  The Hard Rock Hotel San Diego has now been open since the fall of 2007.  That is going on five years of existence.  Along with certain other night clubs and bars, The Hard Rock Hotel epitomizes the Gaslamp experience:  Velvet ropes leading to nowhere, beefy door people who are true nobility of disrespect, double digit tabs for a single drink, poorly thought out use of lighting technology.

  These are essential, philosophically necessary aspects of experiencing the Gaslamp district in San Diego.  To grasp the sublime in the Gaslamp experience you need to stare the spiritual emptiness in the maw.  You need to face it in the same way that the children of Sparta had to prove themselves by spending a winter night outside, naked, with only a spear to fight off the starving wolves.

 I thought the Plateaus were fantastic last night- you could tell they had made good use of their time on the road.  The crowd had the same happy get along vibe that I observed when I watched Crocodiles open for the Temper Trap at the House of Blues- happy to be out on a Monday night, grooving out to the pre band DJ set by Gabe Vega.

  Truly it was sublime.  I came away from the performance shivering with the fear of death and anomie in my bones.  Would that I will return to grasp that sublimity once more. If you want to embrace the Gaslamp in its hoary-frost grasp and ride it to the bottom of the bay, 207 can take you there.