‘Sex & the City’-era hotspot hits the rocks at Hard Rock

I’m allergic to nostalgia. Whenever a hotel implodes 50 years of memories, I salute and never cry. “In with the new,” I say. Vegas needs a fresh start.

But nostalgia hits us all eventually, and so I must inform you that the Hard Rock Hotel is getting rid of its once iconic “Center Bar”/”Circle Bar.”

Last call is June 28. Hotel execs won’t say what they’re planning to do with the huge space in the middle of the casino, only that destruction/construction begins the next day.

News of the Center Bar’s demise, at age 20, may startle former partiers of the Generation-X class who haven’t thought about the Circle Bar since they put down their $15 Cosmopolitan cocktails, stopped trying to figure out if they were Carrie, Samantha, Miranda or Charlotte, and started paying for their kids’ video games in stucco suburbs.

For those of you who didn’t experience the Center Bar at the beginning of the century, congratulations, you don’t have a tribal tattoo on your bicep.

The Circle Bar was Las Vegas’ focal point of pretty people (tourists and locals) for quite a few years, and near it was a popular-with-locals side bar the Hard Rock killed years ago.

But then came Ghostbar, which gave way to Pure, which fell to a zillion other clubs, which bowed to the Cosmopolitan Chandelier Bar, which passed the cool torch to XS, Marquee and Hakkasan nightclubs, and now there are so many basically naked pretty people frolicking across the Strip, you can just situate yourself at Encore Beach Club and wait for the zombie apocalypse in the pool while you’re live-broadcasting your life on a waterproof phone’s Periscope app.

We’re living in the future. How do you like the future so far?

Contact Doug Elfman at delfman@reviewjournal.com. He blogs at reviewjournal.com/elfman. Find him on Twitter: @VegasAnonymous.