Accessible Dating - Downtown Vancouver

            Zoe, Emily, Alana

For our accessible date we decided to venture into the downtown core to see how accessible beautiful Vancouver is for tourists and other visitors.  As the beach in English Bay is an overwhelmingly popular destination during the hot summer months, we decided to head that way and see how close we could get to the actual beach, as well as check out the opportunities for drinks and delicacies along the way.

Meeting at Granville station we found the elevators easily enough from the train platform—located several meters from the back doors of the train.  Thinking about the return trip, however, we decided to also investigate how accessible the elevators were from the street level, and had significant trouble locating them.  After a couple of laps of the station we found a skytrain attendant who pointed us in the right direction. Sadly, without this help it would have taken much longer to find and caused significant frustration—a bad start to a good date. 

Arriving at the intersection of Robson and Denman we began prowling for places to get some tasty food, happily noticing that the majority of establishments on Denman sat flush with the sidewalk.  Buildings that did have a slight incline going up to the door tended to have a slab of cement filling the gap between the sidewalk and the door sill, thus creating easily accessible ramps that merged relatively seamlessly with the surrounding sidewalks. One place we did try to go was The Bayside Lounge, which is a popular bar, offering a gorgeous panoramic view of English Bay and a fun "nightlife"vibe. There was a ramp to get into the building, and the bar itself  is recessed so it's quite low to the ground, making it possible for a wheelchair to pull up to it and have a drink. However, in order to get to the bar area, or any seating area, one had to climb 2-3 steps. We asked the server if it was possible for a wheelchair user to be accommodated. Her only solution was to go up the street to a separate restaurant also owned by the same company. The restaurant, however, had no views of English Bay or the "nightlife" vibe that the bar had.

Bayside Lounge bar

 First thinking that we may be feeling like a little seafood, we headed into Ringo Sushi.  While the restaurant was fully accessible from the outside, once inside we realized that all of their booth seats were raised up on platforms, leaving only a small collection of somewhat cramped tables for us to choose from. Although the waitress happily agreed to move tables around to accommodate us, we decided to continue on towards the beach and see what else we could find. Another two blocks down the street we found the Mediterranean Grill, a family-owned Persian restaurant with an entrance that was flush to the sidewalk, and sporting a ramp on the inside.  Although the interior of the restaurant was smaller than the previous location, most of the tables were situated with a bench-type seat on one side of the table and free-standing chairs on the other, so that you could still maintain the cozy feeling of being in a booth while allowing a wheelchair to access the table. Ravenous from our adventuring, we happily relaxed in our newly discovered booth and enjoyed our tasty dinner! One thing we did notice about the location was that the washroom was a bit small and almost certainly would not have been able to accommodate a wheelchair. So although the entrance and arrangement of the restaurant would have been all right, ultimately it was not the perfect location. Our dinner was still delicious though!

Full and happy after dinner, we headed out to find ourselves some entertainment! As we had noticed several small pubs along the way advertising live music, we re-traced our steps and checked them out, settling on The Dover Inn.  A relatively small, single-level pub, The Dover Inn is a great place to watch a hockey game or enjoy live music in a comfortable, non-intimidating venue. Tables placed intimately around the edges of the room allowed for convenient seating to view the band from, but an empty space in the middle also allowed for movement and dancing if desired! The tables were strategically placed so that some fell in more dimly lit areas while others were in areas of high light, and all were situated with enough room between them to allow for easy movement amongst them.  While a server was available to take our order we did notice that the bar was quite high and would have been inaccessible to wheelchair users, as well as the individual bar-stools.  

Dover Inn

After an opportunity for drinks we considered our options for privacy. Although Zoe lives close to our location in an accessible building equipped with an elevator, we decided to head to the beach and see how feasible an evening stroll along the seawall was. While the sidewalks had returned to their traditional width, we easily navigated our way to the beach.  Although it seemed impossible to make it to the actual water in a traditional wheelchair, the park offers special chairs that are able to travel in sand and reach the water. These chairs can be rented in advance, however, there are only two available for the entire Stanley Park area.  Clear, paved paths carried us all the way to the seawall though, and after a bit more exploring we found the beach-side change rooms and washroom facilities to be fully wheelchair-accessible as well.

 Ultimately, our downtown beach date was a success! With only minor downfalls—including difficulty in finding the elevator to the trains at Granville station, problems with the elevation of booths and bars, and busy, crowded transit—we enjoyed delicious food, good music, and beautiful evening scenery!