By Jaime Woo

Photo by Gabe Toth.

It must be pretty good being Fly. While a downturn in the economy may mean other Toronto establishments are shuttering, attendance has been climbing for the club, which celebrates its tenth anniversary Saturday. In hard times, notes General Manager Gaelen Patrick, people need some fun. “It’s escapism,” he says.
In fact, the venue has a blow-out event planned for its decade in business: Brazilian DJ Ana Paula is being brought in and will spin alongside local DJs Shawn Riker and Mark Falco to electrify attendees until Sunday morning. Patrick is excited about a special show he and drag performer Sofonda Cox will be putting on and expects the venue, which holds six hundred people, will get packed.
The club has evolved since its start, when it catered nearly exclusively to the circuit crowd. Patrick admits that a few years ago, the club got into a rut—”it wasn’t moving forward,” as he put it—and actively sought to expand its offerings. While keeping Saturday nights original recipe, Fly began a Friday series called “Divercity,” including Besharam (“Canada’s largest monthly South Asian party,” according to its website) and the ever-popular Grapefruit. The latter, for example, mixes pop, retro, live drag performances, and go-go dancers and attracts a wider range of guys and gals.
Patrick believes Fly has become a “community hall,” as he’s seen the clientele shift from men coming alone to pick up into groups of friends arriving together to dance (and still, presumably, pick up). He could be right: the club is one of few large dance venues for the queer crowd. (Witness CiRCA dumping its gay promoter and night. It’s even nixed the word “Mirror” from its Ballroom.) So what would life be like without Fly? Patrick wonders: “I haven’t been asked that before. I guess it would feel emptier.” He says Fly is “not the backbone” of the community, but, instead, “more like a bone.”