Using your noodle

Yang Kee Noodle (7900 Shelbyville Rd.) is in the Oxmoor shopping center, and so it's one of those places that you can actually get into via the automatic doors at some of the entrances to the shopping center.

The tables are a little crowded but they're navigable. You order at a counter, go get your drink and then your food is brought to you.

The drink station would be a challenge, I think. Most of these kinds of "fountain drink" stations are difficult to manuever in a wheelchair.

At least it's not way high up, which some of them are (Bazo's on Wallace, for eg., last time I checked.

Cumberland's Gap

Every time I go past Cumberland Brews (1576 Bardstown Rd.) I wonder what happened to the lawsuit that I thought MetroSweep had filed against these folks. Never hear anything about it.

The place is inaccessible -- bunch o' steps at the front, and right on the sidewalk. But there's a nice walkthrough on the side of the building and a ramp could be put in there.

But years go by and nothing changes.

You gotta wonder what goes through management's heads about things like this. Don't they care?

Old, old buildings

Bistro New Albany (148 E. Market St.) is in an old -- hotel, maybe? -- in downtown New Albany -- and by old I mean old: It's probably a late 1800's building, even.

The owners have a do-it-yourself wooden ramp to the door which seems serviceable enough, but forget using the restroom at this venue: It's back through a back door of the dining room, up steps into a drafty old hall, down some steps again... a real nightmare.

When one enconters places like this, one wonders (well, I wonder) what the business owners think. Do they think it doesn't matter that the restroom isn't accessible? Do they feel bad about it but not bad enough to do anything? Do they think they simply can't afford to do anything? Do they think about wheelchair patrons at all? Or do they figure, as most of us do, that either 1) they won't come to dine there if they think they'll have to use the restroom or 2) they figure nobody in wheelchairs will even come, but they had to put in the ramp because it's (grumble, grumble) required, or...

Or what?

A truly strict constructionist reading the 1990 Americans with Disabilities Act would say that a restaurant opening as a new business after 1990 (which I'm pretty sure this one did) simply can't open in a building that isn't accessible to wheelchair users (this means restrooms, too).

But I know of virtually no business that has either known this or paid any attention to it.

Maybe it isn't to be expected for business owners to know all this, but it sure as heck should be known by the licensing poobahs. In Louisville that's the ... but we're talking New Albany, Indiana here -- but they also have licensing poobahs.

Primo doors

Primo (445 E. Market St.) is in a building that seems to have been completely renovated. Primo faces on Market and has a flat entrance, although I personally think the doors are heavy. A wheelchair user would have to have somebody open them for her.

The restroom isn't in the restaurant. It's back in the hallway of the building itself. It's accessible -- that is, what's required by code -- but the number of doors one has to go through to get there -- and the distance -- makes this less than ideal.

Fighting laws

A post the other day about Bistro New Albany got me to thinking about the strange mess that has always existed between the requirements for access under the federal Americans with Disabilities Act and those helpful guys and gals in local "code enforcement" offices. Here in Louisville that's xxx

This could be long and detailed, but I'll make it short and simple, fudging over a little bit of stuff but giving you the essential low-down:

Physical access is a bricks-and-mortar thing that belongs in the world of construction and renovation. Thus, those overseeing that kind of thing are the ones who would logically tell owners/contractors about design requirements that ensure wheelchair access.

The way IPL and their cohorts nationwide see things, they're enforcing codes -- i.e. building codes.

If the code in use (there are state codes and local codes) require a design feature, they'll ensure it's done (ensuring it's "up to code.")

However:

The federal Disabilities Act is a different kind of beast -- it's not a building code at all. It's a civil rights, anti-discrimination law.

So we have apples and oranges, or maybe convertibles and SUVs, passing each other in the night, ignoring each other.

Yet the ADA requires access. That requirement is on the operator of the establishment.

The ADA says nothing to code enforcement officials. It's not their law to administer.

And so they don't administer it.

So we have a business owner opening their business in an inaccessible building. The code officials don't say anything to them about the lack of access. If the owner's not doing any kind of renovation, they don't even have any contact with code officials, unless they're a restaurant, and then the officials check things like the number of sinks, the number of tables for the space, etc., etc. -- all that restaurant-y stuff. But not construction stuff, and therefore, not access.

The code officials don't have to do a thing about access unless the building is actually being renovated -- walls removed, new fronts put on, that kind of thing.

Meanwhile, though, there is this federal law, that tells the business owner, "no; you can't open your new business in an inaccessible building." But, you see, that's a nondiscrimination requirement -- not a code requirement. So the code folks who are dealing with the business getting opened, don't say a word about access.

Nobody, it seems, ever tells the business owner about the ADA's requirement for access. They don't learn about it until a wheelchair user (or a group like MetroSweep) tells them.

Or so they say. You'd sort of think that by now, almost 20 years after that became a federal law, that most business owners would've caught on.

But maybe not. At least most of them insist they were "never told" they had to be accessible. Which is why they seem to feel so aggrieved when a wheelchair user dares to tell them.

And all this is the short expanation. You don't want to read the long explanation.

Steps roulette

Blue Dog Bakery and Cafe (2868 Frankfort Ave.) has a nice flat entrance. The folks who run the place had the building gutted and renovated, so the inside is new. And because of that, the access portion of the building code kicked in, and so the restrooms are accessible. The store portion flows into the dining room via a ramped flooring with a slope so gentle you have to be thinking about it to realize it's a ramp.

The tables are spacious and wide apart and it's really a pleasure for a wheelchair user to dine here.

A few doors down you'll find a business with a step at the entrance, though.

That's the way it is all along this section of Frankfort Ave., and I don't know why.

When Just Creations first opened, on the corner of Frankfort and Bayly Ave., its door -- right on the corner -- had a step. So Just Creations wasn't accessible.

But the store right next to it, to the east -- at that time a Home Textiles Outlet -- had a completely flat entrance.

Go figure!!

For a long time Just Creations seemed to dick around with the city (the IPL folks) about putting a ramp on the sidewalk. The IPL folks don't seem to like that ( although they allow every other possible type of "intrusion" onto the sidewalk -- 200-lb planters, street trees, bolted down benches, bike racks, sculptures, sidewalk tables and chairs) and they wouldn't let Just Creations put a ramp in.

I still think that "no ramps onto the sidwalk" is an issue ripe for a lawsuit. But nobody's done one.

Anyhow, back to the Doorways of Frankfort Ave:

Just Creations solved its entrance access problem by simply expanding into the adjoining storefront when the Textile Outlet moved, doing just what Blue Dog had done, expanding the business and ramping the interior rooms together.

That can happen elsewhere along Frankfort, and I hope it does.

The only thing I hope for even more is for someone to get IPL to get over their ridiculous "no ramps onto sidewalks" mentality.

Introductions all around

I decided to start this project because I didn't think there was a website that folks could go to and find out just what's accessible and what's not here in Louisville, Ky.

The idea is really simple: start a blog, post entries about places I've gone to, letting folks know the lowdown on wheelchair access.

I'm Mary Johnson, the initial Grand Poobah of this blog, and I've been around disability rights in Louisville almost since it began about 400 years ago -- no; really -- but since the 70s. An old-timer, in other words. I've covered disability rights stuff for a long time, and I type pretty fast, so I thought this would be a natural thing for me to do since I'm currently involved in running a business and not doing much disability rights wise. This blog doesn't take too much of my time (since I type fast!!)

I don't do photos well, though -- and the main thing I do when I go out is go to restaurants. So this site is going to be really top-heavy with restaurant access stuff. . . .

Unless you folks reading help out. And I really really want help!

HERE'S HOW: just post a comment below (or on any entry), telling about a good (or bad) place for wheelchair access. Please be really specific about what makes it accessible -- or inaccessible.

I'd love you to leave your name, but you don't have to. If you're "anonymous" and if I don't personally know the place you're writing about, then I'll have to get it checked out before I blog about it.

If you've got photos, even better. You can set up a blog and post them and we'll link to them, or we'll figure out some other way to get them on here.

Tell folks about this site and please, please contribute!