The Oasis Santa Barbara

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In 1990, two years after the Country-club, C.C. Capwell embarks into a new real estate and commercial adventure with the Oasis. He decides to let his son Mason at the head of the project, who at his turn names Cassandra Benedict as administrator. The place has to serve as bar, as restaurant, and as hotel for the very rich population of Santa Barbara. As for the Country-club, the project is the target of the ecologist associations, as the Blue Sky Brigade, with at its head Dash Nichols and the lawyer Julia Wainwright, who are afraid for the infringements on the environment that the building works are going to cause.

We penetrate within the Oasis by going down some steps, which lead directly in a first very lively room. Some round tables allow to have a drink, or to wait for the arrival of ones meeting. Cloth tablecloths, flowers, crystal glasses... Everything is made to mark the high status of the establishment.

At the end of this first room is the bar. We can settle down at the counter or come to order ones drinks. A public telephone is fixed to the wall behind the bar.

The second room of the Oasis is situated just aside, separated from a row of stone pillars.

Many round tables serve here to have lunch, dinner, or even breakfast. Many waiters cross the place up and down, the look permanently very busy.

At the bottom of the room, a door gives access to the terrace, where it is possible to eat outside.

At summer 1991, the wall separating the inside and the terrace disppears. All the restaurant room of the Oasis has then the particularity to be opened on the outside, day as night. The dining room so gives an impression of depth and of very successful brightness.

The restaurant is under Cassandra Benedict's management, who occupies an office. Gina Capwell comes to work there a few months at the end of 1991, and settles down on a table separated from the bar by an open wall.

In 1992, we discover that the Oasis hides a second dining room. Also very vast, it is richly decorated with gilding, thick curtains, padded seats. It contains numerous tables to have lunch, but also a counter to simply have a drink.

We also know of the Oasis the toilet. Gina hides there when, in 1992, she is suspected of the murder of Mr. Taksan, a Japanese businessman, died in the middle of the second dining room.

Finally, since the entrance of the Oasis, a door gives access to Mason's office. As director of the Oasis, he occupies a hushed, vast space, which seems more a place of representation of power than a real workplace (no cupboard, no storage furniture can be seen).

The Oasis will serve in the years 1990 to 1992 of main place of meeting for all the characters of the show, no other restaurant or bar not competing with it any more. It is also used for the organization of parties (Cassandra and Mason Capwell's engagement for example, during which Amado Gonzalez is killed), or of ceremonies (Gina DeMott Capwell and Lionel Lockridge's improvised wedding).