Already known as a tight knit LGBTQ+ community with a community feel for decades, Asbury Park N.J. came together this past week (with some noted exceptions) when Oasis (to be located inside The Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel In Asbury Park announced their preview weekend. The announcement (and the subsequent article I wrote) garnered a great deal of attention, both positive and negative. While some welcomed a new LGBTQ establishment to Asbury Park, many had more questions than accolades, with one online provacatuer even going so far as to call this new venture “Fyre Festival with Poppers”. One thing was certain; Oasis had certainly gotten the community buzzing.
Which makes it that much more surprising when an email blast went out from the Oasis team to potential customers earlier this week that stated the following “We were packing our belongings about an hour ago as we were preparing to head down to Asbury Park to throw you all an incredible weekend of events.However, we just got off the phone with the team of the hotel where for reasons out of our control, and as perplexing and confusing as what we were told, we’ve been asked to cancel all of our preview weekend in its entirety.We are incredibly sad that we couldn’t align on our goals and values with the hotel. There is so much potential and need for a new Queer space in Asbury Park that we see that they don’t unfortunately understand.In just two short weeks the volume of messages we received was overwhelming; messages filled with excitement – optimism – and joy that a new space was coming and that gives us hope and confidence that we can find a new home for Oasis in the future.We learned a lot in this very short amount of time but if there is anything we learned, its that there is a need that exists for a new Queer space in Asbury Park to bring our community together. So for now, the party has been shut down.For anyone who purchased a ticket to the opening night or drag brunch, you will be receiving a refund that will be processed today.Thank you all for all the love and support this far. We’ll see you soon.The Oasis Team”.
As Oasis’ location was poised to be located inside The Berkeley Oceanfront Hotel in Asbury Park, I reached out to management at the hotel. I received a response from Florham Park-based law firm Gordon Rees Scully Mansukhani, (representing the hotel) stating as follows: The Oasis group event scheduled for this weekend was cancelled as it was determined that the event could not proceed as planned without additional time to properly plan the events as promoted by the Oasis group. The Berkeley Hotel remains committed to using their space for all types of events with proper notice and coordination.
After my initial conversation with Daniel Montelongo and Paul “Bubba” Caruso regarding both the Oasis preview weekend and their subsequent plans, I also spoke with them on the sudden cancellation of the weekend’s potential events. Montelongo told me exclusively “As you can imagine, we’re very disappointed in the cancellation of the event. Ultimately, the owner of the hotel didn’t quite understand our goals and objectives even after months of discussions and that became more apparent the closer we got to the event date. With that said, things could have been communicated better between all parties involved and ultimately the one’s who got let down the most in the end was the community”.
So after a week of promotion, controversy, and polarizing online opinions, Oasis is not moving forward. Based on the comments from both parties, it has yet to truly be determined whether this is simply a case of consistent miscommunication between parties or whether Oasis was quite simply, a mirage.
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I’m curious if you know if Oasis ever signed any contract with The Berk. I didn’t know the event was canceled and went to check it out on St Pats day and there was a wedding going on. The hotel employees said Oasis never had permission to do an event there. They also said that no one is doing anything with that Johnny Cash bar in there since those sons of the Real Housewives star shut it down. So to me it looks like the Berk is innocent and Oasis was never real. Their social media still has all their events up telling people to come and not saying it was canceled. Feels like there’s way more to the story that needs another follow up article.