Multi-million-dollar donation saves San Francisco’s Oasis nightclub

By CBS Bay Area

Meesha Jones thought she’d serve her last drink on New Year’s Eve.

“I’ve had, you know, multiple small breakdowns over the past,” Jones said.

Oasis nightclub, where she’s worked the past 10 years, announced plans to close six months ago.

New Year’s Eve was slated for the final performance.

A last-minute, multi-million-dollar donation turned the final curtain call into an encore performance.

“It means everything. It means everything,” Jones said. “Like this place has been through so much and provided so much.”

The club first opened in 2014 as a small drag and cabaret that quickly captured the hearts of San Franciscans. But the club struggled, especially after COVID dealt a rough financial blow.

No one was more devastated than owner and performer, D’Arcy Drollinger.

“Sometimes things shine so brightly, but that’s also what makes them unsustainable,” Drollinger said.

Drollinger had almost given up when they came across Sky Stevens, a fan of the club.

A quick meeting over lunch changed everything, giving Drollinger the donation of a lifetime.

“It gives us a little runway time so we can hire a development team to raise money for the nonprofit, so we can be sustainable over time, and that we can underwrite all the programs, and we don’t get in a situation where we were before,” Drollinger said.

The club will remain a cultural beacon for San Francisco’s LGBTQ community, but now Drollinger hopes to elevate it, turning drag into a widely respected art form, one that loyal patrons, like RJ Singleton, can enjoy — though he never doubted the club would return.

“It’ll be a place for people that are newly out of the closet, that are trying to find community,” Singleton said. “They’ll have another year and another year and another year to be able to come to a place to find their community and discover themselves.”