Starline Family Survival Fund

The Starline Social Club was founded as an inclusive space to celebrate the wild diversity of Oakland's creative community. Over the last five years Starline has grown to be a beacon of love and camaraderie for people of all ways. Whether Starline has been a dance floor, concert venue, comedy club, activism hub, karaoke room, jazz club, folk hall, restaurant, or bar to you, it has been a home and place of employment to over 60 bartenders, servers, cooks, event staff, and security team members at the time we closed down on Sunday, March 15th.

Now those shining stars, who have held the line for all the positivity, love, and community-building at Starline for the last five years are out of work.  We are all devastated by the current world events but our home has been hit hard. If Starline has ever felt like a home to you or someone you love has performed here or worked here or raved about an ecstatic sweaty dance party or soulful set or if you're just feeling the love for our crew, please help out.

Keep in mind our staff includes not only bartenders, servers, kitchen and prep but also sound and light engineers, security and stage managers, marketing staff and artists that have been completely removed from work. The work ethic of our staff is incredible and their attitude even more so. 

We as the owners of Starline Social Club have the utmost gratitude for our family's outstanding commitment to each other and the larger community we serve. Your contribution is a form of sweat we all shed making the magic happen at Starline night after night and helps to ensure safe passage for our fam as we wait this out together (within recommended social distancing).  We can't wait for the day we can celebrate our return, your contribution to our struggle, and our family ring growing tighter and larger in these challenging times. 


Nuts and bolts:


This is exclusively about supporting the displaced staff at Starline, who we credit for making it all that it is to so many. 

Many of our team members live paycheck to paycheck.  While we are encouraging all employees to file for unemployment ASAP, that processing takes time and will not cover their full baseline compensation, which all of our employees count on to survive.

Any funds raised will be distributed in full to staff by percent of time worked over the last six months.  This means different compensation models or rates will not effect an employee's piece of this pie, just their number of hours clocked since October 1, 2019.

Again, this isn't to help Starline as a business, just all the employees who were recently laid off in our closure.

~~~For now we just need your help in taking care of the people that have taken care of us for so long. Love y'all just for reading! Now please tip our Star Fam like never before!   

++I've been stuck unable to withdraw the funds to disperse to staff because this information was not posted here: I, Russell "drew" Bennett, one of the founding Managing Members of Starline Social Club, am withdrawing these funds into my personal account because of verification complications with depositing directly into the Starline business bank account.  The funds will immediately be transfered into the Starline account as soon as I get them and then our General Manager, Adam Johnson, will venmo out the alotted funds to all eligible staff members.  Any staff w/o venmo will recieve a check from Starline for they're portion of the fund. Thank you all who have made this happen! It's huge for the Starline staff!!!





Peace and Love y'all!