Fremont Arts Council – ADA Dungeon at Soltice Parade

The last time I went to the Fremont Solstice Parade Was a decade ago with my late wife. Both of us were Fully able at the time and used to standing and walking all over as most Seattle residents. When I moved back after my wife died, I decided that I wanted to go to the parade.Because it was her favorite Seattle event to both attend and photograph. But now ten years later I am legally Disabled and mobility challenged.

So I sent a message to the Fremont Arts Council asking if there was any kind of seating available, either for free or to purchase for someone who needed to be able to sit during the parade. This was after I had kind of exhausted the private business options because I was a little too late to get in on reservations.

I was initially delighted when I got the response that there was an ADA seating area and I could reserve a spot.

I was however not at all delighted when I actually got to this seating area. It was a small Covered space planted directly in the middle of the sidewalk. This meant that people were just continuously walking directly through the seating area bumping into you and generally just sort of being annoyed that you were in their way.

There were three wobbly, dirty, graffiti covered, cold metal chairs and for some reason, a small step ladder. Once again. I was confronted with the fact that when some one thinks about ADA accommodations, They pretty. Much always think wheelchair. And they don’t everything that a wobbly hard cold metal folding chair Is probably going to be So uncomfortable for a disabled person with mobility issues that It is literally going to cause them pain and more than likely they are certainly not going to be able to sit there long enough to enjoy a parade.

Also the location of the seating area was at the very very beginning of the parade route. There is virtually nothing there as far as being able to get drinks or food or shops and most of the fun part of the parade is in the middle or the end. No, this location had the wonderful backdrop of a large metal fence with a row of porta-potties behind it. Not ones that you could actually get to you just close enough to smell.

Now i’m sure the council will say they selected this area because of the ease of being able to get to it but but honestly I did not find it that easy to get to even in a rideshare. I actually found it easy to get out and get a car home at the end of the parade route, which I painstakingly hobbled to. Also , there was an abundance of paid parking lots near the middle end of the parade route just a street or so over, but not at the beginning.

Now all of this, I guess you just chalk up to once again.Being the last consideration of event planners as disabled people. But what really grinds my gears was walking past the seating area for the Fremont Arts Council and their sponsors. (See last pic.)

Oh it was nice. It was off the sidewalk so nobody was walking through you. They had what look like quite nice and more comfortable plastic chairs with their own soecial tabbards on them. And a perfect view of the best location to watch the parade in the middle of all sorts of shops and businesses and places to get drinks & food. Of course, they had their own snack table so that didn’t even need that. They could have easily reserved a few more feet to have the ADA seating area next to them but they didn’t. Can’t be seen with the riff raff I guess. Wouldn’t be so special for themselves or their sponsors if they had to sit next to the disabled people.

Go ahead and mock me or give all of the reasons why they decided that the ADA dungeon had to be where it was or as bad as it was. I have been to that parade a dozen times and I have walked those streets a hundred times at least. There was no excuse for that crap. It was just an afterthought and a bad one at that and I don’t know how it is most years because this is the first time I’ve ever needed it, but this year it was utterly humiliating and dismissive and just frankly gross.