Awhile back I wrote of a restaurant that evidently offered wheelchair access in the rear -- but had no sign in front indicating this was the case.
Are people in wheelchairs just supposed to know they're supposed to come in the back???
Palermo Viejo (1359 Bardstown Rd.) is another such place.
For a long time I thought they had no wheelchair access. There's the usual step at the front door. I also didn't know they had parking in back. Maybe these are things foodies are just supposed to know.
I know that years ago MetroSweep urged Palermo Viejo to put a sign on their front door indicating wheelchair access via a back entrance.
Still hasn't been done.
What's this about? I really don't understand it. The signs are not all that expensive. And in point of law it's illegal not to have one.
But nobody seems to care -- neither the owners or, I guess, wheelchair users, who either don't complain or don't complain effectively, as the asked-for signs rarely appear.
I'd love to get somebody else's take on this.
When business owners fail to provide access because they say it will cost "too much" to install a ramp or widen a door, I don't like that attitude either, and I fight it -- but I at least understand where it's coming from.
But a sign? C'mon! I just spent a little time on google and found those blue wheelie signs as cheap as $12.50. Getting some glue on letters from the hardware store is maybe even cheaper.
So it's not cost. What is it?
Hidden Access 2
Emperor's New Clothes of Restaurant Access
I've been meaning to post a link to the amazing Sept. 12 New York Times article by its Dining critic Frank Bruni about the access -- or lack thereof -- of NYC restaurants. I call it "amazing" because it's the first I've ever seen of a major news article noting the problem of places which insist they ARE "accessible" being anything but.
It's a phenomenon that's all too familiar to diners who use wheelchairs -- but it's rarely talked about: " the ways in which even the most accessible restaurants . . . fail to accommodate disabled diners as well as they do the rest of us."
Bruni's article, When Accessibility Isn’t Hospitality, continued:
I check on restaurants’ wheelchair accessibility every week for my reviews for The Times, but even I didn’t appreciate the obstacles people without full mobility face until I dined with one of them, which is what I did after Jill Abramson, managing editor of The New York Times, was injured in an accident last May. . . .
So while she was progressing from wheelchair to crutches to cane, I went with her to four restaurants that said they were at least partially accessible to see how true that was.
At most of them we encountered hosts and servers who seemed earnestly determined to be as helpful as they could.
But we also encountered unhappy surprises and challenging circumstances. And we learned what disabled diners know too well: eating out is almost never easy. [Emphasis added.]
Bruni's article may have elicited more responses from readers than any other restaurant article he's ever written.
In the emails he received, he wrote in his blog, readers
spoke to how frustrated they feel and how grateful they were to have their reality recognized. Many of the readers who wrote me drew special attention to the discrepancy between the promises of accessibility that restaurants make and the actual experience of visiting those restaurants.
Here are some snips from those emails:
I’m delighted you’ve brought these problems to public awareness. The restaurants that irk me most are the ones that claim to be accessible when I call ahead but in fact have a small flight of steps just to get in the door —steps, no doubt, that the walking person who answered the telephone had never really noticed before.
And
[I]t never fails to amuse me at how easily the word “accessible” is tossed out. As you proved, that term is very much open to interpretation, especially when you aren’t the one disabled.
And
I too have found that in N.Y. most often restaurants say they are accessible and they really are not. Might just be one step but that’s enough to hinder movement.
And
It is amazing how little we think of these things until someone we love is humiliated and distressed at what is supposed to be a pleasant occasion-eating out at a lovely restaurant.(Read the responses here.)
These readers are all pointing out an issue that I'll be returning to in coming days: That "partial" access can end up being truly the same as "no access" -- and perhaps I'll get into a bit about why people complain so infrequently about the problem.
This issue of access is a true sleeper issue -- and it's only going to become bigger as society ages.
While Louisville has a larger proportion of newly built structures housing restaurants, structures that DO MEET access codes, in fact many of our most trendy dining spots, along the Frankfort Ave. and Bardstown Rd. corridors, exhibit the same problems Bruni writes about in Manhattan eateries.
We can do something about the problem here. But will we?
Basa: no sign of access
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.