The other night I was out at Basa Modern Vietnamese (2244 Frankfort Ave.) with friends. We all climbed the 3 steps into this trendy eatery (open less than a year, I think) and I couldn't help thinking, "How were they allowed to open without basic access?" I suspect it's that old "mustn't intrude on the sidewalk" dictum so prized by Louisville's Dept. of Inspections, Permits and Licenses (IPL), the bureaucratic poobahs who oversee the this and that of new restaurants opening.
Imagine my puzzlement and feeling of vast irony upon visiting the restroom during the evening to find it a model of wheelchair access! Nice big door, nice roomy restroom, nice big grab bars positioned correctly... but how could one get into the place?
Marty Rosen, restaurant critic for the C-J, says the place can be gotten into from the back. Maybe that's true; but you sure wouldn't have known it from heading in the way normal folks do. And last Saturday night it sure didn't look like there was a hoppin' back entrance folks were streaming in and out of.
So...
A thumbs'-down to Basa for the lack of a sign.
Basa: no sign of access
Access isn't the whole story: The Bardstown Bristol furor
The Bristol Bar & Grille, at 1321 Bardstown Rd, has always been know for having a great accessible entrance, even back before it became mandatory. What the management did was slope the sidewalk up right at the entrance so it's a nice ramped grade. There's a rising grade inside, too. Easy to get into.
However, an accessible entrance is sometimes only part of the story.
A number of folks are backing Corey Nett who says management at the Bardstown Rd. Bristol asked him to move because his disability -- he has CP -- was disturbing other diners. Nett, a staffer in County Attorney Irv Maze's office, has filed a lawsuit under the Americans with Disabilities Act.
More on this story here and here.
Auto shop access
Varanese (2196 Frankfort Ave.), a new restaurant on Frankfort Ave., is in a former gas station. That should ensure the entrance is accessible, no? Actually, it was a nice flat entrance, although they've gussied the whole building up so much since its days as an auto shop that you'd never kmow that was its past unless you'd been around here a long time.
There didn't appear to be any access problems I could see. But I failed to check out the restrooms.
Next time!
Carrying on and up at Windy City
Windy City Pizzeria (2622 S. Fourth St.) has great pizza, but it also has steps -- a couple -- at its entrance.
I say, thus, that it's "inaccessible to wheelchair users." However...
One day when we were in there at lunch we saw the door open and a group of wheelchair users come in.
There were maybe 2 or 3 folks in wheelchairs and several more walking, and the walking folks lifted up the wheelchairs, with their riders in them, up over the steps while somebody held the door.
I don't know why, but I got the feeling that this group dined at Windy City regularly -- maybe they worked nearby.
And it didn't seem to bother them at all about getting in this way.
It left an odd taste in my mouth.
I've been trained by years -- ok, decades! -- working with disability activists around the country. I've been to meetings, conferences, demonstrations in Chicago, Denver, Los Angeles, New York, DC with lots of folks in wheelchairs.
I've hung out with them, talked with them, sat in groups with them, interviewed them, written about them. Almost to a person, they believe firmly in this dictum: you don't let yourself be carried into buildings by well-meaning helpers. Besides not being dignified, it's dangerous for both the person being carried and the ones doing the lifting. Wheelchairs -- motorized ones -- can weigh a couple of hundred pounds, before even counting the person in the chair.
There's another issue at stake as well: activists say access is a civil rights issue, and they should not have to depend on "helpers" to get them in and out of buildings. As long as business owners can fall back on the "we'll help them" solution, real access will be resisted, because it's a bricks-and-mortar thing and it costs money.
But most people who are not disability activists think the activists' attitude is overly righteous.
What do you think?
Wow! Whatta Ramp at the Chick Inn
The Chick Inn (6325 Upper River Road) burned down some years ago, and was rebuilt. It's out on River Road where there's almost-annual flooding, and so the owners were required to build the new place up on stilts, in a manner of speaking.
First time I saw the new place I couldn't quit looking at The Ramp.
The whole building is up high, so there's this massive construction project to get diners up there to the door. A big deck of the overly-ambitious homeowner type runs along two sides of the building; steps go up the side and down the front, and there on the side by the parking, alongside those side stairs, is this big back-n-forth ramp.
Totally according to code.
Inside you'd have some trouble navigating between the crowded tables. The restroom is regulation access but there's lots of clutter to get to it.
But wow! That ramp! You gotta love Chick Inn just for the ramp.
Just Creations did access nicely
Just Creations, at 2722 Frankfort Ave. is a shop which bills itself as "Louisville's not-for-profit international crafts marketplace," went to quite a bit of effort to get its shop accessible. MetroSweep applied some pressure several years ago, and the management responded, by expanding into an adjacent, vacant storefront which did have a flat entrance, removing the wall between the two stores and ramping the halves. A nice solution -- and a nice attitude about it, too -- unlike Carmichael's, the subject of another blog.