accessibilty to gay/lesbian venues...

[tomboy]

I'm back again asking your wise + personal opinions on stuff... If you haven't met or spoken to me before my name is Tomboy ;D ....and yes i am lesbian and very proud of it... Last time i came on here i was asking for members personal views on what it's like to be young and disabled and i got alot of feed back..thank you to all that helped me out but again i'm back asking for your views on what you think the accesibility is like for getting into venues on the gay and lesbian scene .....I would love to hear your views on it and ways that you think it could be improved...all you feed back is going to go in the presensation that i was doing before but this time i'm going to do infront of the gay and lesbian youth group that i help out as part of the youth work course that i'm doing at moment....

bye for now

Tomboy

[PurplySparkleyJoey]

Heya Ema
hope your well and had a good christmas & new year

Right .. well, the ONLY gay club we have in cambridge is actually a straight club that runs one gay night a week .. we are so behind the times .. the assessability is ok. The main floor is all on one level & disabled people can get in half price with a carer. There is a 'chill out' bar up saits that is small and they have no lift so you cant use that.
I believe there is a disabled toilet .. but most of the time they are used by any one.

The main probles i face personally is the bar .. its just to high for you to be able to order your own drinks .. you cant pass money over or pick up drinks from the bar top at all.

I personaly dont like clubbing any more (now i use a chair) because i HATE not being on people's eye level .. people just trp over you when it gets busy .. either that or they run away from you like they are going to catch something!

We have 3 gay pub's in cambridge. One if profoundly for men & rather .. humm .. how to put this! Sleazy
One of the lesbian pub's is run by about 7/8 lesbians who have there own croud in there and dont like new comers so people arnt welcome in there.
The second lesban pub is a bit better .. but v. v. unused as its out of the town centre. This is also run by a clicky group though and the land lady is renound for being a bit .. abrupt!
So as you can see .. pubbing & clubbing in Cambridge is hard work!!

The pub's i have used in Manchester have been a bit better .. as they are more 'mainstream' & have a wider users group. But i dont use them enough to comment .. sorry!!

One gay club i wisited in Nottingham was ok, but the up saits was unassessable to wheel chair users. The bar again was too high for wheel chair users to reach.

Hope thats of some help petal!!
Love always xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx