on seating...

On seating….
And A Night at the Opera

I have started this blog entry 3 times and had trouble with it every time. The topic is very large, so I have a lot to say! And at this moment I have a lot of passion about it too, related to the San Diego Opera and the venue where the operas are performed, the San Diego Civic Theater. While writing it, I have had to remind myself several times that I’m writing for myself first! If it’s long and a bit dry, so be it. I post things because I do hope some will be interested enough to read my opinions, but the bottom line is that I write what I need to.

I stay in my chair all the time in my own home and when I go out, and you would think that when other people are seated that would make us more similar, and lessen the differences between our perspectives at least for that moment. It helps, really it does. I appreciate when people sit down to talk to me, being at the same eye level is more comfortable.

Arranging chairs in a space for the benefit of both people who can get in and out of chairs, and for those who bring their own chair is not always a simple task. Medical offices and waiting rooms almost never have an open space set aside for a wheelchair to slide into. They try to pack as many people into a small space as they can, which gets translated into ‘as many chairs’ and wheelchairs are forgotten. I will try to put myself in the most out of the way spot, sometimes blocking 2 seats if they are empty, or blocking access to a water fountain or magazine rack. I can’t blame the offices really, but from my point of view it is sometimes tiresome to feel like you are always in the way. Sometimes I end up sitting near a receptionist window, which may feel intrusive to people checking in, but where am I to go?

Even in my own home, deciding how to arrange the furniture in the living room was difficult. I only use that room for watching TV, or when we have visitors. For TV I would like to be in one spot, but then a chair would have had to sit out all by itself, and there would be a big gap between it and the closest table, unless I and my wheelchair filled the gap. It would look odd. So, instead I sit on the end, which turned out to mean I had no table for MY glass of wine. I solved that problem by getting myself a little one foot square pedestal table with a mosaic top that I can call my own. Most people’s living rooms and family rooms are similar, there’s no place for a wheelchair to fit in among the furniture, except for the access route that every takes getting in and out. At book club meetings for example, I routinely block the opening, and if someone needs to get up, I move out of the way. I mention people’s homes not as an example of how ‘bad’ things are, but how even in the easiest of situations, some accommodations are made. Even in my own home, the arrangement is not perfect. And if there happen to be 2 people using wheelchairs, things get a lot more complicated. When my SCI support group is over, we move all the chairs away from either the breakfast room table, or an outdoor patio table, and that works ok. But the living room? No way!

Seating – where do you put those wheelchairs? What do you do with people who can’t get into chairs? It sounds like a simple problem, with a simple solution – remove a chair and slide a wheelchair in that space! The real problem though is with places where there are fixed seats, that you cannot remove. There are occasionally difficulties in public places where the chairs can be taken away, and in those situations the problems have more to do with access to the seating area (because of steps or other obstacles, sometimes even because of other tables and chairs).

Think of all the places you have fixed seats – theaters, sporting events, airplanes and other transportation, some restaurants, airports or stations, medical offices and waiting rooms… many of them present problems.

The ADAAG has helped a lot in this regard, so that in most venues there are guidelines on how many wheelchair spaces have to be allocated per how many total seats, and requirements are given that the people in the wheelchairs have to have the same line-of-sight as people in fixed seats. This concept is a little hard to understand unless you’ve been forced to sit with a poor line-of-sight. Take a movie theater, with stadium seating and nice comfy seats that tilt back just a little. Ideally you put an imaginary body into one of those seats and draw a line from the person’s eyes (perpendicular to the head, not looking at their feet!) to the screen. Most wheelchair seats do not recline, so the angle from a wheelchair user’s eyes usually goes horizontal, perpendicular to the floor. If the wheelchair is too low in the theater, the person has to tilt their head back to see the screen, since they cannot tilt their body and chair, and after 2 hours of this someone can be in serious pain.

The ADAAG also has guidelines about dispersed seating in larger venues, so that wheelchair seats might be found in all price categories, with many options for types of viewing. I used to remember all of the ADAAG guidelines, from my days in Maryland working on various Access committees, unfortunately I’ve lost the details. But my memory wants to say that if there were more than 600 seats, then there had to be dispersed seating in more than one location. So, smaller venues are likely to have only one choice for accessible seating.

Medical offices and waiting rooms, and I believe airports and other stations too, don’t technically have “fixed” seating. Those seats might be bolted down, but they are considered furniture, and the ADAAG does not address furniture! There are no guidelines for bed height, chair stability, GYN exam tables, table knee clearance unless these things are bolted to a wall or floor! Unless you are in a prison or in your own home, you can’t count on a bed being at the right height. Prison beds are fixed to the wall you see. I did some research on this once, mostly trying to figure out something related to GYN tables. Word has spread though about table height, so it’s no longer a problem getting my knees under a table in restaurants. And some fast food places with fixed tables and seating attached to the tables, will have an odd table with a seat missing and a notice saying something like Handicapped Access, or Priority Seating for people with disabilities.

New sports arenas, like Petco park, and Oriole Park in Camden Yards, have very good seating arrangements. Petco Park has more ramps to go up or down to the accessible seats than I would care for, but overall they have done a good job. Wheelchair baseball fans should check out Oriole Park in Baltimore though, it’s amazing. You enter on the main floor, no elevators or steps or ramps to get to the bulk of the food vendors, or the best accessible seating. You enter through the vending areas onto a level ring of accessible seats all around the stadium. From that ring, seats go down to the playing field, and up into the rafters. I’m sure you can get cheaper accessible seats that you have to take an elevator to, as well as box seats, and seats right behind home plate. But if you want to, a person in a wheelchair can get to their seat, all the food, bathrooms and shops without going up a single ramp or in a single elevator. It’s amazing architecture, and the reason it works is that they bothered to dig a hole deep enough and put the playing field down quite low.

Not all sporting events are well designed however. Some of the worst I went to were my kids’ little league or soccer games. Sometimes there was no parking where I could put the lift down on the van I owned at the time. Sometimes there was no pavement from the parking to the viewing area, and it was gravel, sand or mud (Maryland gets rain). And sometimes the viewing area was so badly arranged that I’d have bleachers blocking half my view. I watched a lot of youth games from the driver’s seat of my van, which wasn’t all bad really. I could listen to a book on tape at the same time!

Airport waiting areas present a different kind of difficulty – crowds. Usually near the gate counter there are a few seats marked as Priority Disability Seating, or some wording like that. I don’t actually need one of those seats, but I do like to sit with the people I’m traveling with, and I do like to be near the counter because of pre-boarding. If I’m not visually close to the gate counter, there’s a higher chance I’ll be forgotten. Even though I don’t really care if I board first or last, the airline people DO care. It’s easier for them if slower customers preboard, rather than get in the middle of the line and slow it all down. And for people like me, who put some wheelchair parts overhead, it helps the flight attendants to let us get all the stuff in the bins early, so they don’t have to figure out where to put things later. The frame of my chair goes in the belly of the plane, which takes time to get done as well.

I am going to digress for a minute – one of my pet peeves is seeing people pre-board with some disability, only to be one of the first to dash off when the plane lands. I may be first on, but I’m always last off, and I think that if that policy were enforced with ALL people who pre-board, you’d get a lot fewer people with “disabilities” on the plane! It used to be a huge problem on Southwest, for pre-boarders had a huge advantage in getting seats. Their move to assigned boarding slots fixed most of the problem. I used to hate flying Southwest because of the cattle call feeling, even in the pre-board area. Now, it’s one of the easiest airlines for me to fly. They have the best service getting me and my wheelchair on and off the plane smoothly.

But, back to the waiting area – You’re at your gate, the flight is late, the waiting area is full and spilling over, where do you go? Theoretically, the people in the designated Priority seating area are supposed to give those up for others with disabilities – but do they give it to me? My husband? There are no clear-cut rules on this, and no enforcement. The only time I’ve seen people give up a seat for someone else with a disability, wheelchair or not, is on the San Francisco MUNI buses (or maybe some other buses too) where the bus driver goes over and tells people to move, folds the seat up so there is room for me and helps me get the chair locked in place. Usually someone will give up a seat nearby for Jim too. This works because the bus driver enforces it, and because a lot of passengers are traveling alone or in pairs, and not toting multiple suitcases.

A long time ago, when my kids were about 7 and 9 years old, and I was still married to their father, we took a family vacation to Philadelphia and visited with my brother and his then girlfriend (whose name I’ve forgotten now, so I’ll call her Mary). We spent one day at the Franklin Institute, which I have many fond memories of because I took numerous summer math and science classes there as a child. The 6 of us were waiting in line outside the Planetarium for the next show, when a staff person beckoned us to follow him to wait at another entrance, to go in as soon as they opened the doors. Essentially we were jumping the line. Mary was really uncomfortable with this, and asked me, rather sarcastically I might add, “ Are your kids used to being treated like royalty?” I was flabbergasted. It was one of those moments when you are totally caught off guard, and don’t think of something really appropriate to say until it’s too late. I mumbled something like, “no, they aren’t”, when what I should have said was,” you haven’t got a clue, have you?” We were given permission to jump the line, so that we could get to the worst seats in the house, the ones in the last row where they had a space for a wheelchair, so that we could all sit together before someone else took them. I had one spot in the whole theater that I could sit, and the staff was good enough to be sure I could get to it first. This was in 1984, 6 years before the ADA. I would like to think that Mary would be wiser now, but I have no way of knowing. I do know though, that in places where seats are not assigned, a lot of people still react like this when they see me being allowed in first. They are envious, and annoyed, and wish they could get in first, without realizing that they might not like the only seating choices I have.

In movie theaters, unless they are newer ones built with stadium seating and an eye for the needs of PWD, it is still often the case that the worst seats in the theater – in the back, off to the side, are the ones set aside for wheelchairs. (true in hotels too, the rooms reserved for handicapped guests are the ones without a view, near the noisy ice machine etc., but that’s another story for another day) Most of the time these seats are fine, perhaps not the sweet spot, but good enough – you can see well, and hear well.

Recently I went to a movie, Girl with a Dragon Tattoo, alone. The theater is an old one, with a long gradually sloped seating area, for about 350 people, and 2 access walkways off-center down the length of the theater. In the center section, between the 2 walkways there are rows of about 12 seats, and on the right and left sides about 3 - 4 seats. For wheelchairs, they took out the back row of the right side. Not ideal, and not where I’d chose to sit if I could! The theater wasn’t full, but some women (one had some difficulty walking) sat in the last row of the center section. I figured I wouldn’t annoy anyone if I sat in the walkway that was just behind them. Then, even though I was way in the back, I’d at least be in the center and on flat carpeted ground. (That’s another problem with those side seats, the ground slopes down, and the floor is slick, so my chair skids forward and my knees press against the seat in front. My chair doesn’t tilt back, so I have to tilt my head a bit, which isn’t horrible because the slope is so gradual, but I’d rather not.)

The movie starts, and an exit emergency light stays on right above my head! It was bad enough that the women in front of me moved up a row, and I went over to my designated spot after all. Great movie, but I’m not crazy about that theater.

The newer stadium seating movie theaters are better for wheelchairs, as a rule, though that was not the case when they were first built. The very first stadium seating theaters put wheelchair seating in the very front row, which was not well received at all. It’s like the sports stadiums, if you are going to put the wheelchair seating in the middle, and not have ramps too steep to get to them (the ADA does have guidelines on that) then a deeper hole in the ground is needed when you build the theater, and that costs more money. So, the theater builders cut corners and didn’t bother to dig the holes, and put the wheelchair areas up front.

There was one of those earlier theaters built near where I lived in Maryland, and our Access committee had a tour one day. I ended up concluding that I would only go there if the movie I wanted to see was in 4 specific rooms and not the others. Those 4 were wonderful because they were larger theaters with the wheelchair area further back – one even had a balcony!, but the others were too close to the screen. I believe either the lawsuits were decided in favor of the rights of people with disabilities, or the publicity was enough to change the practices of the theater companies, but either way the newest theaters seem to be much better as a whole.

Unfortunately, San Diego Opera does not perform in a new facility. Seating 2967 people (see http://www.sandiegotheatres.org/eventstickets/seatingchart.cfm), it was built in 1964 and renovated in 1995. I can only assume it felt it was complying with the ADA at the time. I’m not so sure it is now though, and have been considering filing a complaint with the Justice Department, at least to get them to evaluate it. I won’t file a law suit seeking money, I believe only in the type of complaint that gets changes made.

We’ve had seasons’ tickets for 7 years, getting what were supposedly the best wheelchair seats in the house. These were in the last row on the furthest end of the orchestra section. Seats V 57, 59. There is no central access aisle, everyone enters from left or right. Our seats were in the 22nd row, in a row that was 118 seats wide. You couldn’t see the stage well without binoculars. And acoustics were ok, not great. But these seats were the same price as those in the front row center, or the 10th row center. So we assumed it was the best we could do. One of the reasons for getting seasons’ tickets is that you have a chance to upgrade your seat location as better seats become available, but that perk means nothing to us, because we already had the best we could get, or rather that I could get. Jim could have sat alone in a much better seat. There were other wheelchair seats as well, in the last row of the dress circle, and the last row of the mezzanine, lower price categories, and certainly no closer to the stage.

So, after 2 or 3 years of paying full price, I complained. I said that our seats weren’t any better than the row behind us, which cost half as much. I said that if they wanted to keep our business they should let us get the tickets for the same price as that row, and they agreed. For the last few years then we’ve gotten the tickets at this discount.

This year, the subscription renewal pricing has changed. They split the dress circle and mezzanine sections into 2, so the front section costs more than the back (where the wheelchair seats are), and even more significantly – they have created an Orch – 2 area right around where we’ve been seated all this time that costs less than half of the regular orchestra, and is now priced lower than the dress circle row behind it! Let’s put some dollars on this. Price per seat for 3 operas a year, on Saturdays.
Orch – 1 $660 per person
Orch – 2 $297 per person
Dress C – 3 (area behind Orch 2) $330 per person

Now, $33 is not really a significant amount, but what IS significant, if you assume that prices of tickets reflect quality of seating, is that where we have been seated is rated lower than 7 other seating areas, and is only better than seats in the uppermost balcony in the back. The accessible seats in the back row of the DC and MZ cost more now – at $435.

I am not trying to spend more money, what I want is to get decent seats with the best acoustics and visuals. I’m a visual person, and there isn’t a single seat in that house of 2967 seats that I can get where I don’t need binoculars to see. And Jim is auditory, and he would like a chance to find out what the best sound the house can give is. I’m encouraging him to go on his own sometime, and leave me home.

I really do wonder if it satisfies the ADA that there is no wheelchair seating in the top 4 price categories, and that the best they can offer is the back row in a house of almost 3000. When they renovated in 1995 they should have really looked at their seating to figure out which seats were providing the best sound and sight lines, which is what I assume happened this year, and made sure there was accessible seating in all sections. It is an old building, I know. And renovating it to provide better seating would cost money that the city doesn’t have (is this city owned?), I know that too. The building was designed with absolutely no thought to access, and when it was renovated wheelchair seating was barely addressed as well. The way the seats are set with long rows of over 100 seats makes it impossible to put any wheelchairs in the center without taking out at least one if not 2 rows. And all the other rows in other sections currently have steps to access. But it is not impossible to make changes! And I bet those changes would be an improvement for all. It’s like curb cuts – just because they were for wheelchairs initially, doesn’t mean a lot of other people can’t enjoy them – bikes, strollers, people pushing carts.

There was a public assembly room in Howard County, MD where award ceremonies were often held. Towards the end of my day as Chair of the Access Committee, we took on the county to improve that room. The problem was that it was an upside down horseshoe shape, with the county council sitting along the flat side at the top. The center of the room was like a pit, and if you were addressing the council, you had to descend a number of steps to get to the podium. Seating was all around, stadium style, with seats at each step level. People with disabilities were stuck on the top level. If they wanted to address the council, the mic had to be brought up to them. If awards were given, instead of the council greeting everyone at the bottom, they had to come up the steps to them. It worked, but was not inclusive. It probably counted as a reasonable accommodation according to the ADA, but it put PWD on the ring of the room, the fringe of the party. So, Howard County at first grudgingly, but eventually willingly, drew up some designs to fix it. The winning design, was in most ways the simplest – they raised the floor and made it flat. And guess what? It was a hit, and not just with PWD. The chairs were not bolted down, so the room was more fluid and could be used in a lot of different ways. And when people addressed the council, they didn’t feel like that the council was looking down at them from some high court. The council liked it too. Overall it became a more friendly place.

I have no doubt in my mind that a renovation should be done at the Civic Center to improve seating for all. Having to wind your way down those long rows of seats is a nuisance. For PWD it is really needed. I’ve been told that the acoustics aren’t great, but I don’t think I’m in any position to give an opinion on that one. I can’t imagine that any changes will be made soon. In the meantime though, I am planning one of these days to write a letter of complaint to both the San Diego Opera, and the Civic Center (or City if they are the ones who own it, I’ll have to find out). And the chances of my getting tickets to an opera in San Diego again are rather low. I’d rather take my chances on one opera in San Francisco next year! I have no idea about their seating at this time, but I’d get a weekend in SF as well!

Best seats – most of Orchestra, front center rows of Dress Circle and Mezzanine, side balconies on the lower balcony

Next best – upper side balcony, back center rows of Dress Circle and Mezzanine – wheelchair seats are here in the very last row.

Coming down in price, next best – front center rows of Upper Balcony, wings of Dress Circle and Mezzanine – may have some wheelchair seats here too, in the back row, not sure.

And next is where we’ve been seated – back corners of orchestra

Last – top balcony back and wings and there are NO wheelchair seats there! (there may be an ADA violation here too, if someone called in asking for the cheapest seats, to be told they had to get ones that cost 3 times as much?)

Am I crazy to be annoyed by this, anyone else see why I feel miffed and invalidated? The more I think about it, the more annoyed I get. I was never crazy about the seats we had, but I trusted that we had ones that were considered reasonable by acoustic standards at least. I’m not asking for the BEST seating, just fair seating for the price I’m willing to pay. If all I’m willing to pay is $30 a ticket and all I can get is the upper balcony, back corner, so be it. Getting the price break eased the pain for a while. The curious thing, is that we must be in the computer as “special pricing, don’t touch” because when the renewal came back, it asked for the $330 of the section behind us, not the $297 of the newly created section. Amazing.

Tomorrow will be another interesting experience, not for me, but for someone attending a play with me. We’re going to the Old Globe, a nice and much smaller venue. Again the seating is the back row, and off to the side, but my opinion is that there isn’t a bad seat in the house there, so I don’t mind.

I’m sure that my attitude is shaped in part, because it’s really all I’m used to as an adult. As a child, my family attended shows, but we didn’t spend a lot of money on them. When I was a teenager, and even in college if I went somewhere, someone would carry me to a seat in the middle, and I’d enjoy the show out of my wheelchair, but I didn’t go to many. I weighed only about 110 pounds then. Now, not only do I weigh more, but the usual person with me has aged as well, and shouldn’t be carrying even 100 pounds! So, I stay in my chair. With the ADA, this is also easier to do. I’ve seen more performances in the last 10 years than the rest of my life altogether I think – a result of having kids grown up, more time, and a different husband.

I made the mistake of asking my friend, who is going to the play with me, where she usually sits, and she said – “front row, center”. Well, she won’t get that this time. She knows this and is ok about it intellectually. But how will that feel for her? To pay the same $70 for a ticket, and instead of front row, center, she now is sitting in back row, side – because of a wheelchair? How is this going to feel for any adult who finds themselves suddenly with a disability and unable to take steps? I’m guessing my friend won’t feel really bad, partly because the seats really aren’t bad (the gap between these seats at the Old Globe are nothing like the gap between front row and back row at the Civic Theater) and because she wanted my company. I’m grateful that this is true. People who want to be with you, wheelchair and all, can brush off a seating arrangement change for the sake of friendship. They might not have the same reaction if they had to give it up permanently though, I suspect. Like most of us using wheelchairs, we choose not to fight it, and usually just avoid going to venues that are unpleasant.

Unfortunately that creates a feedback loop the makes it hard for changes to ever happen. Avoiding a venue, means fewer patrons in wheelchairs, which makes the venue think they are doing a reasonable job because they have no complaints. Which is why I am thinking of writing letters, and filing a formal complaint.

There is a phrase that people with disabilities sometimes use for describing people without disabilities – “the temporarily able-bodied”. I wonder, if more people thought about themselves or their mothers as one day needing those handicapped access parking spots, or wheelchair seats, or a chance to get in early to a movie theater – would they be more understanding and design places more friendly?

And now, I am exhausted. I’ve thought about this topic for weeks now, and I’m sure I’m still forgetting something. I wanted to try to write all my thoughts down. If nothing else, it shows how complex this issue is, how big a part of going out on the town the topic is, and how much experience I’ve had.