My Event Full Life is your chance to take a peek inside the lives of some of Eventbrite’s most seasoned organisers as they share the secrets behind their success. What lessons have they learned along the way? What advice has been the most valuable? And what keeps them up at night? Get ready to be inspired by the honourees of our inaugural Brite25 list.
What do you get when you turn a former gay bathhouse into a fabulous queer night spot? The answer is San Francisco’s Oasis, of course. Since flinging open its doors on NYE 2014, the queer nightclub and cabaret venue – owned by the renowned producer and drag performer D’Arcy Drollinger – has gained legendary status among the city’s LGBTQIA+ community.
From welcoming the touring queens of RuPaul’s Drag Race, to serving up drag parodies, live music, cabaret shows, and wild club nights, Oasis is all about inclusivity, community, and pure, unapologetic fun.
Here, Oasis’ general manager, COO, and performer, Snaxx, takes us behind the glittery curtain to reveal the creativity, resilience, and love that have fuelled its success and how building a strong brand has helped them expand beyond their own walls.
Oasis is a labour of love for every person who works here. My favourite thing is that Oasis is an extension of myself at this point, and it’s so deeply rooted in community. Every week, I feel like there’s something that we do that seems impossible. Anytime we pull off a really successful show or event, I’m so proud.
I feel like we’re a bunch of kids putting on a show for our friends. Almost every single person who works here is also a performer or an attendee of events. I love that kind of energy that people are just really inspired by each other and want to do something new and exciting and creative, and boost each other up.
We’ve worked really hard over the years to curate a space that feels safe and inclusive. It might be a large nightclub, but there are lots of people who come here routinely by themselves because they know that they’re going to run into someone they know or make new friends. As much as it’s about fun and razzle-dazzle and glitter, it’s also really, really deeply rooted in us being a family.
We’re very important to our community. They show us that by helping us stay open. For any kind of customer-facing business, whether it’s retail, restaurants, or nightlife, it’s a struggle right now in the Bay Area and San Francisco in particular–and we’ve managed to stay afloat somehow.
We saw that especially coming out of the pandemic. We’d applied for a bunch of grants – some of them we got, but some we didn’t, and we couldn’t exist with the way things were. So, D’Arcy had this brilliant idea to put together an old-school telethon and have people call in and pledge donations and have performers, and it ran for 12 hours.
It was at that point in the pandemic where people were tired of donating and hearing the doom and gloom about everyone closing, but throughout the day, more and more people were tuning in, hearing the stories, seeing the performances, and getting wrapped up in the frenzy of it all and we cleared $250,000, which is nuts. That event is one of our proudest achievements.
My biggest lesson has been learning to trust my gut. I know now that I’ve done this for a long time, and I do have a sense of what things work, how they work, and how I can learn from other events. With event planning, booking artists, and managing social media, I feel like so much of that stuff is trial and error. People can say that they’re experts in those fields, but it’s all about the experiences you have and learning from them, right?
Having guaranteed hits lets us have space to try new things. I think you have to be really brave and willing to try stuff and experiment, but then also really foster the things that do work. Our drag parodies, for example, are our bread and butter. We know that that’s what people know us for and like to come see us do, and they mean a lot to our community.
I’ll always remember directing my first main stage show. As I say, we do a lot of drag parodies here – D’Arcy’s very well known for the Sex and the City drag parody, and we’ve also done Friends and Star Trek. In 2023, I got to direct a Fresh Prince parody. While we always do gender-bent and colorblind casting, so many of these old shows – especially in the 90s – were very white, so to be able to put an all-Black cast on stage and direct Fresh Prince was really awesome, and that meant a lot to me.
We celebrated our 10-year anniversary over New Year’s. D’Arcy’s been around since the beginning. There used to be a couple of other owners – one of which was Hekalina, the world-famous drag queen – who all bought the club together. And then right before the pandemic, the other owners decided that they didn’t want to do this anymore, and so D’Arcy bought them out and I became the general manager, COO, and booking manager. But then the world shut down. I remember sitting in the office with D’Arcy and being like, ‘Was this the worst decision I ever made?’ It ended up not being, of course.
People now understand what our brand is and trust us to curate other things. Oasis produced the main stage at San Francisco Pride in 2024, which was a really huge honour, and it was also our second year doing the Outside Lands Music Festival. Being able to take what we do outside of our walls and share it in other places has been really special. We get a lot of outreach from different places and venues looking for drag or queer art because we have this reputation now for being able to put on high-skill stuff that’s also really fabulous and really fun.
If I were to sum up the spirit of our events in a song it would be… Mighty Real by Sylvester. That song is so indicative of San Francisco. Sylvester walked these streets and was a part of this community. We also have a mural of Sylvester on our wall outside. It really makes me think of D’Arcy, of disco, and the energy of this space.
Also, Pink Pony Club by Chappell Roan. That song feels like this special, safe, incredible place that you go to like in Cheers, where everybody knows your name and it’s just really fabulous.
Find out who else made it onto Eventbrite’s inaugural Brite25 list
