Big Changes at SF Oasis!
I have not made an official statement until now, but as of July 20th I am the proud Owner of Oasis. In the Fall of 2019, my two business partners decided they no longer wanted to be club owners and my initial reaction was to follow suit. I knew it would be a lot of work, but after sleeping on it, I realized how important Oasis was to me on so many levels. As an artist, it has been a platform to create my original work like the Champagne series, Bitch Slap, and Ultra Showgirls, as well as all the TV parody shows. The club is a venue for so many talented performers, both locally and internationally – a space and stage designed to elevate the art of drag. Oasis is also a clubhouse for the community and audiences who crave a queer space and a truly San Francisco experience. I realized I wasn’t prepared to let all of this go.
Little did I know, I would be buying out my partners and taking over the business during a global pandemic. I won’t lie, some days I feel absolutely overwhelmed and that I made a crazy decision, but those feelings of fear are quickly erased by the outpouring of support from the community. Like any good drag queen or king knows, if your zipper breaks right before your entrance or the DJ loses your music, you have a choice: give up and not go on, or get scrappy, find some duct tape, or a song you don’t really know all the words to, and go out there and sell that number! That’s exactly how I see this time in our collective “herstory”.
To survive is to adapt, and that is what Oasis is doing. In the past 5 months, we’ve created the Oasis TV YouTube channel to show archival footage from past productions, turned the main room of the club into a sound stage where we film “Hot Trash”, launched “Meals on Heels” our weekly Drinks, Dinner & Drag delivery service, partnered with our neighbors Don Ramon’s & Eat Sushi to open our roof and parklet for people to return to the space and gather safely, and next is our new streaming platform we’re unveiling in September.
The true heroes in this process are my investors and new partners who, when faced with the stark reality that the club would be closed indefinitely, chose to stay the course with me to ensure that there is a queer space for all of us to come back to when this is over. And the incredible Oasis staff, both new and returning, who have been willing to show up, work really, REALLY hard, and together feel our way through the darkness of this unprecedented time.
A silver lining in all of this is to have an opportunity to essentially stop and recalibrate. To look towards reopening with the intentions of inclusivity, integrity and safety as a framework to make Oasis truly that. Our first weekend back open was fabulous! We're so appreciative of the people who came out to support. We want to be a meeting place for the community to return to post-COVID, and the only way to stay open is to continue to pay our rent and our employees.
Our new operating hours are:
Fridays 4pm - 9pm
Saturdays 4pm - 9pm
Sundays 2pm - 7pm
Seating is first-come, first-served. For those of you who aren't comfortable coming out yet, we can deliver to you via Meals on Heels. You can also support Oasis through Venmo, becoming a monthly subscriber to our Patreon site, purchasing merch from our new store, and spreading the word about us to all your friends!
I am incredibly grateful to Heklina and Geoff, without them Oasis wouldn’t exist and I wouldn’t have this daunting and exciting opportunity. Here’s to holding it together as a community and finding our fabulousness when the rug keeps getting pulled out from under us. Here’s to the future!
