3
Acrobatic Architecture
I visited The Street on a Wednesday afternoon, so you can imagine that I didn’t get to judge how wild the partying gets there. I did, however, get to take a good look at the architecture, which is as least as wild as I imagine Friday Night Karaoke to get. The staff were getting everything nice and shiny for Edinburgh Pride on the weekend, but were still more than happy to chat to me about their accessibility features and the troubles of wheelchair access in a listed building with weird stairs, innumerable nooks and split-level platforms.
I was in good enough form to leave my powerchair at the top of the long, drawn-out flight of deep shallow steps to take a look at the downstairs, which houses the dancefloor, bathrooms, another bar and a photobooth. This wouldn’t be a good idea at busier times because it blocked part of the bar and if I had wanted to stay and party, I would have put the chair into neutral and wheeled it down the stairs, which are basically a very bad ramp. The staff told us about wheelchair users whose friends helped them and their wheels down the stairs before and I thought that was a great encapsulation of many queer spaces: not very accessible but full of community that makes things happen anyways.
I visited The Street on a Wednesday afternoon, so you can imagine that I didn’t get to judge how wild the partying gets there. I did, however, get to take a good look at the architecture, which is as least as wild as I imagine Friday Night Karaoke to get. The staff were getting everything nice and shiny for Edinburgh Pride on the weekend, but were still more than happy to chat to me about their accessibility features and the troubles of wheelchair access in a listed building with weird stairs, innumerable nooks and split-level platforms.
I was in good enough form to leave my powerchair at the top of the long, drawn-out flight of deep shallow steps to take a look at the downstairs, which houses the dancefloor, bathrooms, another bar and a photobooth. This wouldn’t be a good idea at busier times because it blocked part of the bar and if I had wanted to stay and party, I would have put the chair into neutral and wheeled it down the stairs, which are basically a very bad ramp. The staff told us about wheelchair users whose friends helped them and their wheels down the stairs before and I thought that was a great encapsulation of many queer spaces: not very accessible but full of community that makes things happen anyways.
