Rolling through the (573) with my *chair

By: Hailey Brown, Natalie Meyer, and Kati Kokal

Our accessible date takes place within four square blocks in downtown Columbia, Missouri. Our group wanted to choose somewhere that seemed unique to our city and could provide an experience that neither partner would forget. We took into account the details that are easily overlooked sometimes– the grade of sidewalks, availability by bus transport, and bathroom opportunities. We decided to start at the Paratransit bus stop, go to 11 Eleven restaurant in the lobby of the Broadway Hotel for a meal, grab. drink at Uprise Bakery, see a film at Ragtag Cinema, and end the date back at a ground level apartment at Brookside. After our experience of planning this date, we have become familiar with small inconveniences that may not prohibit the physical access to a space, but limit how much access a person has within a space. By the end of our day, we could all imagine the anxiety and stress that has to come with a lifetime of inconveniences that range from small and annoying to catastrophic.

In order to start the date, we decided to pick up our wheelchair-using partner at the Paratransit bus stop near the Cherry Sreet. garage. We were excited to learn that Columbia has a free Paratransit service, but after researching the service and learnings its limitations we saw how stressful the process can be. Any user of the Paratransit service must make a reservation at least 24 hours in advance with the goCOMO service. The website says that people are often assisting other callers for the city, so if the phone rings for too long, callers are asked to leave a voicemail. The caller must give exact details of when and where they need to be picked up, the amount of assistance they need (if any) and all the details about where they are travelling. After leaving a message and hoping the Paratransit service processes it, the user of the wheelchair must be sure that they schedule a date within the hours of operation for goCOMO– Monday through Friday from 6:25 a.m.-7:25 p.m. and Saturday from 10 a.m.-7:25 p.m. The paratransit service does not run on Sunday. Although a valuable resource for people in the community, Paratransit literally defines the access that our partner has to entire parts of the city and when. That kind of control of access borders on discrimination.

After picking up our date at the bus stop, we made our way down Hitt Street to Broadway so we

could enjoy a meal at 11 Eleven. We noticed that the sidewalks on the opposite side of the road were quite narrow and we would have to walk behind or in front of our date, instead of being side by side. As we arrived at 11 Eleven we couldn’t take the walkway directly to the front because of the set of stairs that bring you up onto the patio. We ended up walking around the patio where we found a ramp to take us to the front of the restaurant. This was a little frustrating but we were happy that there was an alternative. The door was wide enough but it was a bit of a tight squeeze. 11 Eleven on the inside was very spacious and easy to maneuver thanks to the wide walkways between the tables.

Every table had chairs that were able to be moved to make a spot for our date. The tables that had booth seating also had a chair- so all tables were available to us (disregarding how many people are there). There was also a sitting area with couches for if we wanted to chill with our date before or after eating and to some TV. We weren’t familiar with how crowded the restaurant gets on a typical evening, since we went around noon and it was vacant. The only problem with the seating was the bar area which wouldn’t have been ideal for our date since the bar is very high. If we wanted to order a drink it would have to be served to our table- they wouldn’t have been able to go up to the bar and sit down and order the drink themselves.

Before going to see the show at Ragtag we wanted to stop and get a drink at its neighbor business Uprise Bakery. Uprise had an accessible entrance with a wide enough door. We went on a Sunday and arrived there as they opened which was 12:30 p.m. It was just about as vacant as 11 Eleven, but on a typical day, Uprise gets pretty crowded. So this is one of the only times we could be sure to find seating with our date.

The tables had enough space between them and there were chairs for us to pull out to make room for our date. We also noticed that the seating outside had stairs leading to it, as well as an entrance from the inside of the restaurant. So in order for our date to get to the outside patio we would have to go inside first and when we leave we wouldn’t be able to exit from the patio. There always seemed to be some roundabout way to get from point A to point B. Although we were happy to be able to have our date at these places, it wouldn’t have been such a happy experience for our date because of the lack of accessible entry ways. Uprise was another similar situation to 11 Eleven where we had to go around in order to get to the entrance. Along with that, Uprise has a bar that would have been too high for our date. We noticed that there were accessible bathrooms at Uprise, but it was only one of the bathrooms that was specifically labeled.

After some fun at Uprise Bakery, we went to the ticket booth entrance in front of Ragtag. The booth seemed decently low for anyone to have easy access to retrieve a ticket. We went past the ticket booth and ventured down a ramp towards the theater. There were two seats "reserved for wheelchairs", but they were not placed side by side. So if two people using wheelchairs came in they would be expected to sit in front of or behind of one another. These reserved seats were also placed directly across from the trash cans. We would be burdened with the smell of trash and listening to every audience member coming in and out of the theater if we sat in these seats with our dates. If there happened to be a fire inside of the theater we also would be stuck in front of the exit which could potentially be
dangerous if people were trying to stampede out of the building.

As the date was coming to an end we decided to find a place to go for some “romantic private time.” Luckily, one of us lived close by at Brookside Midtown. We traveled from Ragtag, across the sidewalk, past the restaurant and ended up at the Brookside apartment complex. Fortunately, there was easy access to the first floor with a smooth ramp and bars. There were no indented curves or stairs blocking access from the first floor rooms. However, if someone wanted to visit friends on the upper Brookside levels it would be impossible for a wheelchair user to access. The older Brookside buildings only have stair access for upper level floors and there are no elevators. This project opened up our eyes to the obstacles the city of Columbia has for disabled people.

This accessible date was an important experience for us as disability studies students because it allowed for clear connections between the real world and McRuer’s 2002 work,“Compulsory Able Bodiedness.” By that, we saw that it is determined to be simply an advantage that spaces are physically accessible, not part of the foundation of a place that is being developed. In addition, in several places we had to shrug our shoulders and move along because our partner would not be able to use a space. This type of world-shrinking can occur so frequently in a city where there is an assumption that all bodies are nondiabled. McRuer’s idea of compulsory able bodied heterosexuality extends the assumption that two people who use wheelchairs will not be in the same space at the same time, and that they will be different genders. We saw this first hand at Ragtag Cinema, which had reserved spaces for people using wheelchairs seated in one front of the another, and again when gendered restrooms where both are not “accessible.” Finally, we found ourselves frustrated that even spaces deemed “accessible” seemed to have used “accessible” as a checklist rather than a lived experience. McRuer would argue that this further alienates non-normates from civic and social participation in a way that upholds compulsory able bodiedness.