Hall of Shame: Capitol Hill Block Party

The CHBP is a summer mainstay of the Capitol Hill area, however unlike its name implies, a small neighborhood community event it is decidedly NOT- no matter how much it declines to be compared to one, it is a music festival. A raucuous, sprawling, profit-driven, drunken extravaganza that spills out into the streets surrounding its black tarp barricades- this year for three days, Friday July 22nd 3pm through Sunday the 24th 2am. Though the subsequent carousing can be expected to take longer to filter back out of the many bottlenecks imposed by the neighborhood streets surrounding.

Do I sound bitter? I am, a little. I like a good party as much as the next, but this is not a party I would feel safe attending, nor would I recommend it to anyone else with a sensory or mobility impairment. So while I get the noise, the mess, the inconvenience of having one of my favorite parts of the neighborhood blocked off all weekend, and an uptick in getting hassled by drunken assholes, I get none of the fun of the bands, crafts, literary events, or drunken partying myself.

The CHBP website lacks information about accessibility, and when I emailed the organizer, Dave Meinert, to inquire about access, the reply was prompt, but confused. All the streets and individual venues were accessible,* he said, so clearly the festival was too, right?

Wrong.

What about the crowds? I asked. What about the perfectly able-bodied people who get injured by said each year? ** Are there any provisions being made to assure safe queuing and traffic flow for people with disabilities?

The answer that came back was that no provisions were being made, because no provisions were necessary. Sure, it gets crowded right up by the stage, "as at any show," and if I wanted to get close to the main stage, I could talk to the production manager, and they would "work something out." Otherwise, there were no crowds. No queues. No problems. Nothing to see here, move along.

Now, while Meinert may say that he doesn't want the CHBP "...to be Bumbershoot (or) ...to be Sasquatch," the fact stands that it is a major, for-profit music festival with an extremely high attendance in an extremely confined area. And at least Bumbershoot and Sasquatch provide explicit accessibility accommodations and information regarding such on their websites.***

Now, by some accounts, steps have been taken to improve the situation from previous years. Ticketing has been capped at 500 fewer per day than previous years, and steps have been taken to prevent people ducking the barricades and slipping in for free. (Though how effective those measures will be remains to be seen.) But still, while CHBP is a much smaller festival than either Bumbershoot or Sasquatch, it still faces similar crowd-control issues, (if anything, worse ones,) and the blithe denial that there could be any problem at all indicates either profound naïveté or willful ignorance regarding accessibility issues- neither of which bodes well for your safety or comfort in this situation, gentle reader.

UPDATE: So, the CHS Blog's wrap-up post on this year's CHBP shows some crowd-sourced pics and videos that indicate that the crowd situation on the street has indeed improved a bit this year, but inside the music venues it still looks pretty impassable / borderline dangerous for the disabled. (Crowds that packed + crowdsurfing + no designated area blocked off for people with disabilities is, in my experience, not a good combination.)

That said, if you want to attend for the literary, political, and crafting events, it looks like those might go a bit better now that the street traffic has improved.


* I would actually contest this, especially for the Comet, which lacks accessible toilet facilities, but I haven't written those reviews yet.


** Note the comment from Curtis Bigelow, from the Lobby Bar. I hear a lot of stories, but they may be getting blown out of proportion, or people may be machoing it up and taking for granted that trample injuries come with the territory. If I were a real reporter, I would wait until this weekend, and then go hassle the poor scrubs in the ER and UC units.


*** In fact, I've had exceptionally good accessibility experiences with Bumbershoot lately. In the past couple years, they've made a huge effort to improve access throughout the festival, and it really shows.