Lent, as anyone who knows anything about Catholics knows, is the season before Easter when folks eat fish on Fridays. Not hard to do in Louisville! And so many good fish-sandwich places! Lent starts next week and I was thinking about that, and the word itself -- lent -- and that got me to thinking about the word "lend" -- as in "lend a helping hand." It's a phrase one hears often when one comes up against a lack of access -- as though "lending a helping hand" is as good a solution as providing real access -- and certainly less economically painful for a business. Somewhere unspoken in all this is the message that if someone will "lend a helping hand" then the crip should be happy for that and not grouse about wanting some kind of physical, costly change.
I was by the Fish House (2993 Winter Ave.) the other day, and I got to thinking about all this. What brought me there, other than the fish sandwich, was the report I'd heard that they'd "winter-proofed" that big tent-like extension they have on the building. I wanted to see what that now looked like in terms of wheelchair access
The original building itself maybe was a filling station? Sort of looks like that -- an old one, pretty tiny. And the door you go through to place your order at the counter is up a big concrete step or slab.
Now that would be pretty easy to ramp, especially since they have all that room in that big tent-like extension. But they've never ramped it. (What's funny is that, once inside, they have ramped the floor where you go down to sit in the small, original dining area. Go figure! Maybe it was just ramped originally.)
But the deal is, I suppose, that you can sit in the tent area and someone will come and take your order. That is so typically the response of restaurants....
Anyhow, to get to the point: The new winterizing of this larger area included putting a big fat metal threshold at the door into the place. So you can't even get in THERE in a wheelchair.
Did anybody even think about it?
Doubtful.
Probably the response to any questioning of this renovation would be, "we can help you get in." Just like restaurants can "help" patrons in wheelchairs get up steps and over curbs.
The "helping" solution seems so practical, so correct that it's really hard to argue that it's not really appropriate.
But it isn't.
Lending a helping hand in Lent
Old bar bars entrance -- again
When Café Lou Lou moved out of its startup location on Frankfort Ave. at Pope Street, I heard a rumor that the move was at least in part occasioned by the fact that the buiding -- at 1800 Frankfort Ave., which I believe used to be a bar -- was violently inaccessible, and that folks had complained.
It's an awful old building: A step up to get through the door, which fronts right onto the corner, and then the World's Tiniest Vestibute with one or two more steps and yet another door to get -- finally! -- into the place. Once inside, there are still more levels. But that seems a fairly moot point, since who can get in??
So I was thrilled when Café Lou Lou left -- but I worried about the next tenant, which I suspected would almost certainly be a restaurant as well.
And sure enough...
Guess who's settled into the old bar? Why, none other than the Kentucky BBQ Company, recently known as Bourbon Bros BBQ back when it was down on Brownsboro Road. It was in an accessible location there. It had started out across the street, in that little building that used to be a bakery right on the corner of Frankfort and Crescent Ave., and that, too, had an accessible entrance, I believe.
Ah, but the BBQ guys seem to have not given access a single thought. And now, once again, the old bar building houses a restaurant that is inaccessible.
It would really really be nice if Metro's Dept. of Inspections, Permits and Licenses didn't allow new restaurants to move into inaccessible quarters. Some legal beavers locally have off and on suggested that a "place of public accommodation" (in this case, a restaurant) taking up digs in an inaccessible place probably violates the state Civil Rights Act, not to mention the Americans with Disabilities Act.
But IPL says "hey! That's not our problem!"
Website provides access guide -- to Chicago
Illinois state government has just released an "access guide" to Chicago -- Easy Access Chicago. It's both a website and a book, and it currently "provides information for disabled visitors about more than 300 sites in the Chicago area," according to the press material provided at the news conference when it was unveiled.
Access guides can be really useful -- or really frustrating. Of course it all depends on how comprehensive it is and how accurate it is. I've found far too many guides of this sort either list very few places or, more often, list places that in fact aren't as they are described in the guide.
How can this happen? It can happen when those who gather the information are either lazy or sloppy -- or worse, when they rely on the venue to rate themselves as to whether they're accessible or not. One of the tactics some less-than-competent access guide groups use is the telephone survey.
"Hi, I'm working for the Access Our City guide -- can you tell me if you're accessible to disabled people?"
"Why certainly, ma'am, we are accessible."
"Thank you!"
Of course, the proprietor didn't mention the 2 steps at the entrance ("nobody's ever had any problem -- but we rarely have anyone in here in wheelchairs anyway") -- or the restroom that's down a hall too narrow to allow a wheelchair to get through.
So, of course, the only real way to prepare such a guide is to send out surveyers with a checklist and a tape measure.
I don't know how Chicago's Open Door organization did it -- they're the ones who created the guide.
The website is promising, although I find the navigation overly arcane. Why not just list all the kinds of places they've rated -- restaurants, hotels, etc. -- on the home page and let you click on them? You have to click on the navigation tab called Access Information to get to a page that lists the criteria they used; you still have to click on more navigation bar links (on the right this time) to get to any info about restaurants, lodgings or whatever. And even then, you have to get all the way to the bottom and find another little link that gives the true access specifics of any individual place.
Still, despite my nitpicking of this site, it's a great idea for a resource that could be far more useful than this one-person powered blog we're doing here.
Louisville should have an Easy Access Louisville guide, right?
When you google "Access Louisville" you don't find anything about disability access. It seems the name Access Louisville was long ago appropriated by Metro Government for PR purposes.
Oh well.
An embarrassing entrance -- but no bigotry? I don't think so...
Butterfly Garden Cafe (1327 Bardstown Road) moved several years ago into its present location, a fully inaccessible building. MetroSweep eventually sued them about it.
Time passed, though -- a lot of time, to my way of thinking -- and nothing got done -- took forever -- then I learned the matter had been resolved; that the place had in fact installed a ramp.
But it was the kind of solution that still manages to stick it to the crips, so to speak, and I can't help but wonder why it was accepted by the folks who use wheelchairs.
I had not actually been there until yesterday. I suppose in a sense I was boycotting it, although that's really too strong a word. I simply didn't want to patronize any place that had been so unwilling to provide access, and then been so nasty, to my way of thinking, in its final solution.
So it wasn't as though I didn't know I'd find something that irritated me.
Still I was surprised when I actually parked in the back parking lot and my friend and I made our way to the cafe, only to learn that the only real way to get to the entrance was to go along the side of the building between the cafe building and the building to its south. And that pathway consisted of the ramp, rising up nicely.
Well this could've been great! I was, for a few moments, pleasantly surprised.
That pleasant feeling would not last, though.
When you get to the top of the ramp, you've come about two-thirds of the way to the front of the building, and you're at a side door.
It's there that things fall completely apart.
Because the door you come to opens directly into ... a diner's table!
Yes, the door, although it was in fact unlocked and had a lever handle, was a door no one would ever go through. You'd bump right into diners! Can you imagine any wheelchair user with the chutzpah to do that??
I'm sure that's just how Butterfly Garden intended it -- and, I guess, MetroSweep accepted this "solution."
To "really" get into the cafe -- that is, for all the normal ladies the Cafe is really intended for -- you move forward from that landing to a set of steps, which you walk back down, then walk around the front to the front porch, walk back up those steps, and up yet another step, to finally get into the building housing the cafe.
How do I begin to explain what's wrong with this picture?
Yes, the door at the top of the ramp was unlocked. I opened it just to see. Sure enough, when I did, the diners at the table in front of the door looked horrified, as well they might. Was somebody actually trying to come in this way? they seemed to be thinking.
Can you just imagine how it would feel to be someone in a wheelchair coming up and -- well, they'd see that the door opened dab smack into a cafe table, and I suspect would be too embarrassed to go in. Or, if they did persist, what a scene there'd be, with folks jumping up, moving tables, water spilling, hostess wringing her hands.... a really wonderful welcome, designed to make the crip feel as though they are the wrongdoer, not Butterfly Garden.
But, as you know, nobody is bigoted against disabled people. Nobody wishes them any harm. This was just the best the poor Butterfly Garden could do.
You might believe that, unless you notice the expanse of yard at the front of the building, which could have easily been ramped.
You might believe that, unless you think about how easily the cafe could have made that side entrance into its main entrance, simply by rearranging furniture and the hostess station, entailing virtually no cost other than a couple of hours' work moving things around.
But they didn't mean any harm? If you believe that, try reading this.
Louisville's heaviest restaurant doors
Well, maybe not the heaviest, but certainly right up there. They're the doors at the entrance to Red Pepper Chinese Restaurant (2901 Brownsboro Road). Great food, but heavy, heavy doors!
And here's the kicker: They've got a massive set of setps up to the entrance, but a great ramp right next to them. The place was initially built as an Indian restaurant (in the late 1980s or early 1990s) and it's clear the owner believed in that "if it sits up high, it's more impressive" fallacy so beloved of architects. But code officials, I guess, made them do a ramp along with the steps. So no complaints there.
But those doors! First off, they're massive. Probably 10 feet high, wood, carved -- probably supposed to invoke the doors into old Indian palaces, I suspect. And they have these big iron rings on them like old fashioned door pulls. No levers here, no siree!
I can just barely pull them open, and I've got a LOT of upper body strength.
I can never figure out why code officials can be so good on some aspects of access and so ignorant -- or maybe it's just lackadaisical -- on others.
The weight of doors seems to be one that they pretty much ignore. They certainly have ignored it here.
Access, interrupted
Have you been to Dean Corbett's new restaurant, "An American Place"? It's out in the 'burbs, in front of Costco, at 5050 Norton Healthcare Blvd. The building is a 150-year-old farmhouse, completely renovated -- I had wondered what the access would be like with this kind of a renovation.
But the access inside looked very good to me the night we were there with friends.
You enter the restaurant from the big front porch, and of course big farmhouse steps lead up to that porch. But, indeed, there is a ramp off to the side. A fine ramp; a regulation ramp. It takes you up to the porch over on the side, where you then travel across the porch -- about 30 feet, maybe -- to the front door.
But...
(And yeah, isn't there always a but??)
When we visited, it was cold, cold, cold -- naturally; it's winter! Yet on that front porch, despite outside temperatures that assured there'd be no outdoor dining for months yet, were all the tables and chairs that will grace it for eating out on the porch come warm weather.
And there's no way in the world someone in a wheelchair could navigate through that gantlet of tables and chairs. They're way too close together.
It's bad now, but can you imagine it when there are folks sitting at all those tables?
"Excuse me, can I get past?"
"Pardon me, can you pull your chair up?"
"I'm sorry, can you move for a moment?"
I can't imagine any wheelchair user coming to Corbett's and feeling OK about even trying to run that gantlet.
As with so much when it comes to access, I assume it's oversight. So... what's going to be done about it?
If something isn't done, the fully accessible restaurant is going to still pretty much be offlimits to the wheelchair crowd -- that is, those who can even afford this very pricey but wonderful venue.