Rolling Traveler

This week’s city was San Francisco, but the main focus was getting around the city, not what there is to see and do. Today’s post is the first to focus on things to do and places to go in the city: as always for a Sunday post, it’s an ecclectic mix of facts, reviews and ideas, and by no means a definitive tourist guide. In later posts, I will revisit San Francisco to talk about specific neighborhoods and complete the picture of this great city. For now, here is my San Francisco Seven.

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“Hey. Hey! Hey, guy in the wheelchair!”

I looked up from my book to see the bus driver looking at me expecting an answer; a few of the passengers were looking at me too. I had no idea what he wanted. Then I saw that the lift was deployed and everyone was waiting for me to get off.

“Sorry, what?”

“I said, you wanna get out here now? You pressed the bell, you’re holdin’ up my bus.” One of the passengers agreed that I was holding up the bus, and there was a general air of public transport irritation directed at me for not already being on the lift getting off the bus. That was unfair: I hadn’t pressed the bell at all.

That part of me that gets embarrassed easily by fuss and bother quickly calculated if I was near enough to my destination to just get out and roll from here, thus escaping the situation quickly, but it was too far, so I answered: “No, I didn’t press it. I want 9th and Judah, like I said.”

“GodDAMN!” He angrily hit the controls for the lift. “Holdin’ up my bus!” Continue Reading »

As I mentioned on Monday, San Francisco has a comprehensive public transport network that includes MUNI bus services to every neighborhood and two light railways, MUNI Metro and BART. These three interact well: the city’s BART and MUNI stations and major stops are all on bus routes, and the weekly and monthly MUNI FastPass is good for all the bus and Metro lines and for the BART within the city limits. The network is wheelchair accessible, with the buses rating Good, the Metro rating Good, and the BART rating Very Good. There are a few things to note about each service when planning a journey.

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When it comes to safety belts, I’m one of those law-abiding people. I would never ride in a car without buckling up and I keep my belt fastened the whole time I’m seated when I’m on a plane. However, it took nearly going through the windshield of a San Francisco bus to persuade me to take the safety precautions for wheelchairs on board seriously. 

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Picture the scene: it is after 11 pm in downtown San Francisco. My friend Geoff and I have just come out of the cinema, we both have to be up early the next day, and neither of us wants to face the stink of the Civic Center Muni Metro station elevators, so we decide to share a cab back to the Inner Sunset where we both live. We walk up to the nearby line of taxi cabs and head to the first in line, a station wagon whose driver is reading a newspaper.

“Evening,” I say, smiling. “We’d like to go to the Inner Sunset, 9th and Irving.”

He looks up, with the start of the smile on his face, but it quickly fades. He points at the wheelchair and scowls: “I can’t take that. You’ll have to call a cab from dispatch.” He then returns to his newspaper, discussion over.

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For my first US city overview, I’ve chosen San Francisco. Having been lucky enough to live there for 18 months, I know the Bay Area very well, and it is now an annual holiday destination for me, both due to the many good friends I made there and because it has a lot to offer as a tourist destination: excellent restaurants, interesting and historic sights, a great public transport network, and an atmosphere all its own. Like most US cities, it is very wheelchair friendly, at least to the extent that the city had any say in the matter: all public buildings and most services and businesses are fully accessible, but the topography of the peninsula San Francisco stands on presents an obstacle that no amount of legislation can overcome. You can’t sue a hill for making it difficult for you to get around. In terms of the infrastructure, San Francisco rates a Very Good, but in terms of how independently a manual wheelchair user can sightsee, it rates a Good.

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This is the second in a series of posts about choosing the right wheelchair for your needs. The first is here, and it is about main wheel tires for manual wheelchairs. This week’s post is also about wheels, but this time the focus is on the front wheels or casters.

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Ten years ago, I didn’t own a computer. I didn’t even have an e-mail address. It wasn’t that I didn’t know about the Internet: I just had never thought I’d need it. I called and occasionally wrote letters to friends and family, and any information I wanted was in the library. The Internet, I had in my infinite wisdom decided, could do nothing that I couldn’t already do, and was therefore over-rated.

Yes, I was one of those people who did calculations on paper and refused to own a cordless phone.

Ten years ago, I also had to use a wheelchair for the first time, and if I’d known then what I do now, I would’ve been online before the ink was dry on the prescription. Continue Reading »

Our experience colors our perception of the people we meet: that’s just human nature. If every Irish person you’ve ever met has been a heavy drinker, it’s hard not to expect the next one you meet to be a heavy drinker. Maybe it’s only a fleeting subconscious impression, but it’s there. Even when we have no previous experience of the ‘category’ someone fits into (be it nationality, occupation, religious affiliation, hair color, or height), we still have some preconceptions, based on hearsay and vague ideas. I still meet people who’ve never met a wheelchair user before meeting me, and I’ve had some odd questions over the years, but none as strange as when I went to an interview for a job at a Japanese school.

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It is Tuesday, my day to vent about issues I have encountered in my travels. The important thing for me in writing about problems that wheelchair users face is not to simply rant, but to look for reasons and possible solutions. However, when I came to writing today’s post, I found it difficult to find that balance. Important public buildings that remain poorly accessible get on my nerves too much, and on Sunday, due to a diversion, my train ended up at a major railway station that is, to my mind, ludicrously inaccessible.

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