The photograph I keep going back to is the first one I took that night. Stacey Wilson is behind a DJ booth wrapped in fake hedge, headphones sitting on top of her hair, grinning at nothing in particular, and the sticker on her laptop reads FLY GIRRL. Behind her is a mural in reds, oranges and one loud yellow, framed on both sides by rough stone walls. I was there on Tuesday, September 29, for an early evening called GET LIFTED, a DJ set by Flygirrl plus a Flygirrl art and goods pop-up, five to nine, no cover. I went to listen, to buy some art and, if I am being completely honest, to annoy a friend while she worked. It turned into one of those evenings that becomes a whole thing, and I am Harry Hayman, so of course I have thoughts.

Who Stacey Wilson Is

If you have spent time in Philadelphia nightlife or its art scene, you have run into her work even if you never caught her name. Her own site calls her an event producer, visual artist, muralist, graphic and web designer and educator, and it links to her sip and paint parties, mural work, art portfolio and music. The University of Wisconsin’s arts programs describe Flygirrl as the venture that combines her art, design, music and what they call ground-breaking promotions and events, and they hosted her for a conversation about her practice in November 2020.

The best single portrait of how she works is the Inquirer’s 2018 profile. It describes a promoter, graphic designer, painter, jewelry maker and art teacher with studios at Cherry Street Pier, who grew up in Levittown and studied graphic design. It also tells the origin of the name. In 2001 she was part of a T-shirt company built around the word jawn, and she was Flyjawn. She dropped the jawn, kept the fly, and spelled girrl with two r’s so that a search for her would not land on cheerleading camps. That story came back to me when I walked up to her table.

The Table

The pop-up was set against a dark wood wall with a polka dot cloth on the table. Framed prints leaned in rows: faces with red lips, a pair of hands with red nails at a keyboard, a woman in a white gown drifting beside a moon, a long-haired figure in bold geometric stripes. Stacked on the corner of the table were T-shirts that read OGJAWN, LEGENDARY JAWN, PHILLY JAWN and, on red cotton, FLYJAWN. So the nickname she retired from her stage name is still on her shirts, and I find that wonderful. Some names you do not outgrow, you just put them on a table next to the new ones.

I bought art. I will not tell you which piece, because one of them was for our friend Cris, and it went out to California in the mail. Who are we kidding? Star! Yeah, that one.

Tastytreats and the Long Game

Here is the part of her story that I think too few people know. The Inquirer reported that in 2001 she co-created Tastytreats with Questlove and Yameen Allworld, a weekly old-school party that ran until 2014. It began in a small basement at Second and Pine streets, moved to Fluid in 2002, and drew guests the profile lists as Q-Tip, Jazzy Jeff, Biz Markie and Gang Starr. She also worked for the Bynum brothers, starting as a server at Zanzibar Blue and later managing Brave New World, and she did graphic design for several promoters.

Read that list slowly. Someone who spent years building rooms where other people played now sat behind the decks herself. In the same profile she describes herself as more of a house music fan than a hip-hop head. FOX 29 ran a profile in May 2023 of a woman known for her art, design, music and production style all across Philadelphia, and that description has aged well. At this point, the surprise would be if she ever stopped expanding.

The Room Underground

The event was in the Foundation Bar, and the stone walls in my photographs are the first clue about where you are. The Inquirer described foundation. in 2021 as a subterranean cocktail bar beneath the Divine Lorraine Hotel on North Broad Street, entered from what looks like a subway staircase, with stone walls that reportedly date to the space’s past as a speakeasy. That article credits a chef and a Philadelphia DJ who goes by DEL with the project, and they are the Natalie and Del I mean when I say my man Del and Natalie built the place. Philadelphia Magazine reported in 2020 that the original plan was a bar built around a professional recording studio, a stop before and after shows for people heading to the Met nearby.

A DJ booth in front of a mural in a cellar with a recording studio in its plans is about as good a place for this as I can imagine. The event poster gives the address as 699 N. Broad St, which is the building above it: as Wikipedia records it, the Divine Lorraine at 699 North Broad Street, designed by Willis G. Hale and built between 1892 and 1894 as luxury apartments. Father Divine bought it in 1948 and made it a fully integrated hotel, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2002, and after years of neglect Eric Blumenfeld bought it at a 2012 sheriff’s sale. I wrote about another Tuesday night in that same Foundation Bar earlier this year, if you want more of that corner of North Broad Street.

Grown, Suspiciously

Somewhere along the way, all of us got grown. Very grown. Suspiciously grown. Then you look up and, well, old. And yet we are still out here discovering new things, making stuff, buying each other’s art, listening to music, drinking Old Fashioneds and laughing way too hard.

I think about that in terms of Philadelphia. A city does not have a creative class in the abstract. It has people like Stacey, who has made posters, parties, paintings and shirts for decades and decides at this point in her career to take a new lane and do it in public, in a basement, on a Tuesday, with no cover. That is not a small thing. That is a piece of the infrastructure of a cultural city, and it runs on friends who show up.

Legacy as Continuing to Become

We talk about legacy like it is something you look back on someday. Maybe some of it is simply continuing to become something new and getting to watch your friends do the same. Watching Stacey move into yet another creative lane made me smile, not because it was surprising, but because it was exactly right.

So if you want to do what I did, here it is. Find the artist in your life who keeps changing lanes. Go to the thing they are doing now, on a Tuesday, in a room you have not been to. Buy a piece of art. Listen to the whole set. Annoy them a little, with love. Her website is the place to start, and its events page is where I would watch for the next one.

Love you, Flygirrl. And yes, I will probably continue annoying you. ‘Til next time.

Flygirrl Behind the Decks at LIFTED in Philadelphia