New camera-free Toronto nightclub might just be exactly what the city needs
Toronto has a bit of a nightlife problem, and the team behind Complex 19, the city's newest nightclub, whose only ask is that its visitors have a good time, is on a mission to fix it.
If you've planned a night out in the city at any point in the post-COVID era, you've probably experienced it: you and your friends want to have a big, great night. You want to dance. You want to enjoy being together, but where?
Sure, Toronto has no shortage of bars, clubs and events that you can try your luck at, but whether or not they'll be able to offer the experience you're craving feels like a gamble.
The question of whether you'll be crammed in like sardines, unwittingly captured in the background of photos and videos, bobbing along to the music at best, is always a possibility. It feels like nightlife, or at least what it used to be, is limping towards a slow and painful death in this city.
It's a phenomenon that's been commented on at length in recent years, from in-depth analysis to anecdotal remarks on social media, and it's something that Bradley Blaylock, Marc Bou-Fadel and Mitch Gibson, event producers who've spent the past several years doing impressive work to resuscitate some semblance of fun on Toronto's nighttime scene, know all too well.
It's part of the reason why, despite, by Blaylock's own admission, not being entirely ready, they teamed up to purchase a vacant nightclub in downtown Toronto with the mission of creating a space for Toronto to truly connect and even, god willing, actually dance.
The founder of Toronto's Common Froot marketing agency and much-loved queer event series' Precious Cargo and YumYum (which he created alongside Bou-Fadel and Gibson), Blaylock had hosted plenty of events at Nineteen Toronto, the now-shuttered club that Complex 19, the club concept they're opening.
"[YumYum] was always at that venue under separate management, and then that management lost the contract, and we jumped in. So it's not like we weren't particularly ready to take over a club by any means, but the opportunity kind of just showed itself. We knew our audience was growing, and we know what works with this YumYum party, and why this venue works so much, so we jumped at the opportunity," Blaylock tells blogTO.
One of the central factors that made the party particularly special, Blaylock says, was its phone-free policy. Something about the minor act of stickering over a phone camera — a practice that's already common in cities with more fulsome nightlife scenes like Berlin and New York — immediately allows revellers to leave their inhibitions at the door.
I'd argue that it's those very inhibitions, reaching a peak strength in Toronto's nightlife scene as it's dominated by an age group that largely came of age in the panopticon of social media, that are keeping the city from fully having fun on a night out.
"Honestly, if you boil it down to the way you feel when you're with your best Judies, and you can act a fool, do whatever you want, and feel, kind of, like a collective energy amongst yourselves: that's happening because no one's watching," Blaylock says.
"And so the best way to bring that energy into a club is to kind of remove the voyeuristic feel of like cameras everywhere, because then everybody's kind of on alert, and that's not what we want."
Removing phone cameras from the equation also strips away some of the "showiness" that clubbing has come to be associated with, Blaylock says. It doesn't matter what you're wearing or how much you spent on bottle service (which Complex 19 has eschewed entirely), just that you're present.
It speaks to a larger craving for connection that's been endlessly discussed in recent years. Social media creates a sense of synthetic community that gives its users a quick hit, but it also means that many of us have forgotten that the real thing still exists, and it's so much sweeter.
And if people can find connection — even if just within their own being and even if just for one night — at Complex 19, Blaylock, Bou-Fadel and Gibson will consider the project a success. It sounds like they're already succeeding at building a community around the club, too.
As Blaylock, Bou-Fadel and Gibson embarked on the ambitious — and costly — project of building out the club, they resolved to do as much of the grunt work as possible by hand. Quickly, though, friends, fans from past parties, and excited future patrons began coming out of the woodwork (pun intended) to volunteer their labour.
"The queer community and friends really showed up. Some people would be like, 'Oh, we're an electrician,' or 'We're a carpenter,' or 'We know how to paint.' So sometimes we have like, 20 queers in there building this club with their hands, which was one of the nicest things," Blaylock recounts.
It speaks not only to the strength of the connections the team, all members of the queer community themselves, have made within the queer community, but also to the way that, with just 6 posts on social media, the mission of Complex 19 has already spoken to the city.
The 10,000 followers they almost immediately garnered on Instagram is only further proof.
"I think we're doing this because we're tired, you know? We're tired of having to share, thinking that we have to dress just in case we're caught in a photo. And I think we're just kind of over the dopamine hits for a bit. It's not necessarily fighting against anything, as it is, you know, feeling the incessant need for community," Blaylock says.
Call me crazy, but Complex 19 might just be the antidote to this societal sickness. A step towards one, anyway.
"This is our opportunity to kind of just say, 'Yo, just come dance, be present.' And if you want to take photos at night, there's every other club in the city. And if you don't for one night, you can come over to Complex 19 and enjoy yourself. And at the end of the night, if you look back at your photos and you only have, like, the slice of pizza that you bought after that, I think that sounds like a pretty good night," Blaylock says.
Complex 19 is still in the process of opening, hosting a handful of events, like YumYum's grand return, with a long weekend party on May 17 coming up, but the club's official opening is, fittingly, on track for Pride month.
That said, even if you don't identify as a member of the 2SLGBTQIA+ community, Blaylock is quick to note that you're welcome at Complex 19, too, as long as you're ready to respect your fellow nightbirds and tear it up on the dance floor.
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