This story aired in the February 4, 2026 episode of Crosscurrents.
The day after Christmas, stage performers, cabaretists, and dancers got some really good news. The beloved San Francisco nightclub Oasis was slated to close on January 1, 2026. But it was rescued by a major donation from a Bay Area philanthropic group.
This was welcome news to everyone in the Oasis family, especially Tito Soto, the club’s event producer and a headline performer.
Here's the story of a man who brought Oasis to life every Saturday night for the last six years. And who continues to invest much of his life into the club.
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Story Transcript:
EMCEE: Give it up for the producer of our show, Ti-to So-Toooo…
TITO SOTO: Thank you so much for being here. I want to say a big thank you to our headliner Anetra. And anyways, I love y'all so much
REPORTER: It’s Saturday night at Oasis and like every Saturday night, producer Tito Soto is backstage, making sure everything is just right for “Princess,” the nightclub’s weekly cabaret extravaganza. He’s helping the stage manager find some last-minute equipment.
SOTO: It’s like on the other, on the stage wing. Stage right.
STAGE MANAGER: On the wing?
SOTO: Stage right, yeah.
REPORTER: For the denizens of the Bay Area’s performing arts world, Oasis is a beacon. It was opened on New Year’s Day 2015 by two drag queens, Heklina and D’Arcy Drollinger, and their partners Geoff Benjamin and Jason Beebout. The space is part nightclub, part performing arts space, part community center. It is raunchy, irreverent, kinky, untamed, even clownish sometimes, and big on drama. Tito says the space is just like the drag artists who perform there.
SOTO: She's a full drag queen herself. A very loud, colorful, all-over-the-place drag queen.
REPORTER: And when it comes to a loud, colorful and all-over-the-place show, everyone knows Tito Soto will deliver. He takes his queues from the likes of Freddy Mercury and the band Queen, from George Michael, Elton John, and Kiss.
SOTO: Those were the anchors of my drag that kind of like started it all. It's evolved since then, but it's always been about recreating a stadium concert feel.
REPORTER: He creates that feel on stage with a rainbow of lights; with performers dressed in sparkles, bangles, sequins, and exotic makeup; with costumes that turn a performer into a 5-foot satellite with two legs, or a square-headed monster, or a deliciously sexy beast.
SOTO: Particularly during Halloween time, we throw our favorite event of the year, where we really fully decorate the whole club. We have aerialists, we have fire dancers, we have performances down downstairs. You enter in[to] a Frankenstein lab room. There's, you know, specialty cocktails or, you know, everything that I can bring in from my theme park design days.
REPORTER: Tito was born and grew up in San Juan, Puerto Rico. He left home at 17 to pursue a degree in architecture at Cornell University. That wasn’t all he was pursuing.
SOTO: When I was living in Ithaca, I would go down to New York City and I was sort of exposed to all the club kids and all the gay establishments there, and I became very in love with just drag in general in New York.
REPORTER: Yes, Tito has done conventional “boy-meets-dress” kind of drag before. But he found he could relate to drag, and express himself most authentically, as a man.
SOTO: I don't care necessarily what you call me: I'm a drag performance artist, or, “Drag Prince” is the branding of it all. But I personally don't care.
REPORTER: He later moved to LA, where he became a show set designer for theme parks like Universal Studios. But his true passion was performing. And as a cis-man performing as a male drag king, he was a pioneer.
SOTO: You know at that time there weren't really any performers that sort of looked like me. I think, people would remember me because of it, but also I would get a lot of like, shade from drag queens that didn't understand what I was doing: “I had never seen something like that.” And then also audience members that were like, “Wait, what's going on here?” You know? And especially in LA where everybody has lots of opinions.
REPORTER: But then, in 2018, Tito moved to San Francisco, and…
SOTO: …hat just like, went away. Like, it was like not a thing at all. And it made me feel so welcome. It kind of unlocked a different side of me.
REPORTER: Tito’s life at Oasis began that same year, when he started performing at “Mother,” an event organized by Heklina, one of the Oasis co-founders.
SOTO: I was very intimidated by Heklina, just 'cause she's just like, a scary drag queen. (Laughs) But you know, I started doing her show and she was really warm to me and she would give me a lot of praise and I know that she wasn't one to give a lot of praise.
REPORTER: While he was performing at Oasis, he also started producing a new show called “Princess,” at the old Stud bar on Harrison Street. But the Stud closed in 2020 because of the pandemic.
When businesses began to reopen in 2021, D’Arcy Drollinger, another Oasis co-founder, asked Tito if he would bring his show to Oasis.
SOTO: …It changed my life forever.
REPORTER: He started producing “Princess” on Saturdays regularly, and often performed in the extravaganza as well. And he started co-producing other popular shows at Oasis, like a ballroom event, an underwear night, and a Latin party. To Tito, getting to do this work full time is a real privilege.
SOTO: Being able to really focus on the show and not have to be distracted by anything else but the show is,that's the dream job.
REPORTER: Producing may be a dream job, but sometimes on Saturday, things can feel like a nightmare.
SOTO: Some of the worst days at Princess is when I wake up and it's ten in the morning and I get a text, “Hey, the headliner canceled,” and we have a sold out show for that, and who do I call that has maybe done the show before? “Hey, can I literally fly you out like in an hour and will you do it?”
REPORTER: Fortunately, they often say yes. Drag performers from around the country come to the rescue.
SOTO: That's also the magic of the relationship that we have with these headliners that have seen the space, have experienced the magic that is Oasis, that is unlike any other in the country. And they're like, “Oasis? Down. Anytime.”
REPORTER: Oasis works like a family. That makes it easier to deal with the hassles. And share the joy.
STAGE MANAGERt: Good job everyone, good job, you ate that.
REPORTER: Backstage, it’s now time for a Tito tradition at Princess. Dressed in his finest Daisy Dukes and a T-shirt, Tito gets ready for the stage.
SOTO: Let me grab one more. OK, let’s go up…
REPORTER: He heads up the stairs to the stage, escorted by a couple of go-go dancers carrying trays full of tequila shots. The three dole the shots out to the crowd as Tito thanks them for their patronage and leads them in a toast:
SOTO: To the future, to all of us. I love you all so much. Say it with me: Para arriba!…Abajo!…Para el centro!…Y adentro!
REPORTER: Everyone downs the shots and carries on with the party.
SOTO: Oasis has meant the whole world to me, it really was the space where I feel like I grew up into a much more heightened version of myself as a drag persona and also as a producer. And it's given me a home. It's given me a family and I will, you know, keep these years with me forever. These have been the best years of my life.
REPORTER: Luckily for Oasis and the rest of us in the Bay Area, it’s a job he can keep on doing.
