You can't get there from here

The sign tells the first part of this story: The "handicap" entrance to the Derby City Antique Mall is around back -- same area as the loading dock. The building was originally an old school -- used to be called Hikes Graded School in the old days. Now it's an antique mall. See all the steps at the front entrance?




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Around back, way high up next to the door we see this sign:




And here's the entrance:




Ignore if you will, the dangerous grate. Ignore the steep ramp.You can't see it, you can only see the ledge next to it. But there is a ramp -- steep, but usable.
Except when you roll down to the doors -- they're locked.

Lending a helping hand in Lent

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.

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.

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.