I stopped in at a fish-sandwich place the other day for lunch and encountered a "fountain drinks" counter way too high to reach.
It's not the first time I've encountered one like this -- the other one I recall is also at a fish place, but they're everywhere.
The counter all the stuff sits on is simply too high. They've got that soft-drink dispenser unit, those big urns, the cups and the napkins, straws and stuff all up on a counter that's probably about 4 feet off the ground to start with.
What's the point? There are plenty of fountain drink stations in fast-food restaurants that are on counters much lower. So what could possibly be the thinking of those who install these high counters?
Well, there it is -- no thinking.
What it tells me is that, once again, nobody -- not contractors, not owners, certainly not building or restaurant inspectors -- pays the slightest bit of attention to the fact that these things are supposed to be at an ACCESSIBLE height.
"Oh, they'll always help you get your drink for you!"
That's the response to complaints, isn't it?
But it's not the right response. The right response would be to put the counter lower in the first place.
Fountain drinks from on high
"This door to remain unlocked..."
The sign on the door leading out to a side patio read, " This door to remain unlocked when building is occupied." Big white letters on a dark gray background. Can't miss it.
I'm sure it was put up by the fire marshall. Restaurants by law have to have more than one exit.
But it made me think about how often the "handicapped" door remains locked.
That was my experience at the Butterfly Garden. The place I was at where I saw the sign is a new place, just finished being built. Accessible, yes -- so that's not the issue.
The issue is about enforcement.
It has been my experience that almost every business open to the public -- restaurants certainly -- know very clearly what all the fire code requirements are. And don't dare disobey them. What happens if they do? Do they get a big fine? Do they get shut down?
The fire marshal almost certainly required that sign to be posted -- it's a fire code requirement, I'm pretty sure, that a restaurant have 2 exits. The door boasting the sign was the second exit, after the main front door.
Wouldn't it be great, I thought, if such a sign were required on any non-main door that provides the sole "handicap access?" How many of those doors remain locked! That too, is illegal...
But it seems far fewer business owners are concerned about breaking access laws.
Hmmm....
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.
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.
A bad taste at a good restaurant
There we were at Meridian Cafe again. I like the food; but I always get a bad taste in my mouth when I'm there, because there isn't any wheelchair access whatsoever -- and there could be.
This is a big old house on Meridian Avenue (112 Meridian Ave.) in St. Matthews. Admittedly, it would take a big ramp to provide access; the porch is up about 5 steps; then there's another step into the house itself.
But a ramp would certainly be possible. There's a yard big enough for a ramp; an enterprising and motivated owner could even do a clever thing with a deck/ramp and provide interesting outdoor seating possibilities, like the owners of Kashmir did after Metrosweep got on them about a ramp (see the photo here).
The thing folks don't seem to GET is this: access isn't simply a "feel-good option" -- it's THE LAW.
Businesses seem to think that's just not important.
When a business is pressed about installing a ramp, typically they yell about cost. A ramp doesn't have to cost a lot of money -- certainly no more than a deck. And restaurants are always adding decks, patios, patio tables and chairs, umbrellas, plantings...
Why not a ramp?
It is the law, after all.
The right hook
The other day I was at Uncle Tubby's Pizza over in Jeffersonville (103 Quartermaster Ct., Jeffersonville). Tubby's is in the old Quartermaster facililty, which has been redone into a kind of mall. New stores in all of it. And all of it, it appears, accessible!
And there I saw an access feature I've longed to see -- but never have:
In the restroom, in the accessible stall, the coat hook inside the door was lowered. A woman in a wheelchair could actually hang her purse on it!
Sad that this has to be such an amazing sight.
Most of those stalls, even when they're roomy enough, even when the grab bars are installed correctly -- and even when the stall door actually locks, which is infrequent -- the stupid hook is way way too high to use if you're in a wheelchair.
And it's so very very simple to do correctly!
Kudos to whoever installed the restroom there.
Can't get there from here...
So here we are at Wild Eggs (3985 Dutchmans Lane) - reviewed this weekend in the C-J.
Thing is, the accessible parking is way way back in the back, where you have to try to roll past all these cars and squeeze in the narrow passageway -- ooh, can I squeeze past that bench there? oops! watch the planter! -- oops! can I get around that post? Several of 'em -- see 'em? There's a newspaper box sticking out. We're taking the photo right by the box there.
Here's the thing: This photo we took standing right at the front door. It's flat right there -- it's flat all along there. There's parking right at the front door. You can see the cars.
Sure, they could have put the accessible parking right here at the front door.
But nooooo, it's way back in the back.
Any idea why?
This is a NEW RESTAURANT! Just opened!!!
How can they get by with this ridiculous "path of travel" problem?
Hidden Access 2
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?
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?
Accessible Bluegrass Brewing in St. Matthews
I've been to this brewpub/microbrewery many times (Bluegrass Brewing Co., 3929 Shelbyville Rd.), but I've not been throughout the entire facility. Mostly I gravitate to the big back room.
As far as I can tell the place is pretty wheelchair friendly. The entrance is flat; the sidewalk is ramped. The restrooms, right at the front, are accessible. And there are plenty of tables and fairly wide aisles between them.
It's fair to note that there are some sections of this biggish brewpub that are up steps -- different rooms.
But for sure you'd be able to eat, drink and be merry here from a wheelchair.
No sand on Sahara!
Today's LouisvilleHotBytes blog in Leo featured the Sahara Mediterranean Café (3701 Lexington Rd.), so a friend and I went right away to check it out.
Totally, totally accessible. Beautifully so -- from the flat entrances -- both of 'em, front and back -- to the parking, to the tables, to the counter, to the restroom.
A new building, of course. But since that doesn't always translate to wonderful wheelchair access, it's good to note when it does.
Food's great, too.
New restaurants, not always accessible
Doesn't the Americans with Disabilities Act say that new places of business have to be accessible?
Yeah, it does.
But that doesn't seem to matter much. New restaurants open all the time with steps in the front.
Sometimes, turns out, they actually have a ramp -- in the back. But they don't have any sign out front letting you know that there is a ramp in the back.
I call that "inaccessible."
Tuscany - an accessible Italian restaurant
Today I ate at a new Italian restaurant, called Tuscany, in the shopping center just west of Wal-Mart on the southwest corner of New Cut Road and Outer Loop. It was nicely accessible -- no automatic door, of course -- virtually no restaurant has that -- but it had a nice flat entrance and was roomy inside.
Food was good, too.
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.
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!