This story appears in our Spring Art + Performance 2025 Issue, published on March 5, 2025.

Back in December, after returning from my honeymoon in Paris, my husband and I settled back into our downtown Seattle apartment overlooking the waterfront—proud of our little city. There’s something about living a few blocks from Pike Place Market that makes it easy to see that, like Paris, Seattle has its cute shops, sights, and (dare I say) culture. I am aware this is not a popular opinion, but living downtown RULES. I love being within strolling distance to everywhere; especially as a person with a disability, I am obsessed with how easy it is to get around. Me, my husband, our cat, and my big-girl city vibes.

So when we returned to the States to find that Overlook Walk—an elevated pathway connecting Pike Place Market to the waterfront—was finally finished and open to the public, I was so pumped to see what they’ve done with the beautiful new city feature, built where the viaduct (RIP) once was. My husband and I have been nosy neighbors about its progress over the past year—we’d walk over to it a few times a week, seeing what looked like paths swirling down the new structure, exclaiming, “Oh my god, those look like ramps, those are gonna be ramps!” Good on Seattle, I thought.

The New Waterfront has promised to make downtown the most pedestrian-friendly version of itself. The fancy overlook walk has worked to “restore connectivity downtown … connectivity between people and place, past and present, sea and shore.”

So what did they finally make? As we walked closer and closer, I thought: “No. They didn’t! Those look like… it’s… stairs.” I quickly realized that the new feature centered massive staircases in every place a ramp could have very easily gone. And worse, the only adapted solution was behind the action. Elevators. Banished to the back of the park. We headed toward them, my back to the vista, steam coming out of my ears. We waited to cram ouselves into a tin can. The whole vibe is to enjoy the park—at least give us an elevator made of windows.

As a person who takes daily walks downtown, I want to help you imagine something: My husband and I are shopping at the Market for dinner, we head toward the pretty way home, where we can look at the sun setting and the stunning views. Suddenly, the walk is interrupted. The ramp we are on ends in stairs. Stair after stair. “Oh, look,” my husband exclaims. “There’s a ramp!” “A ramp that leads you to more stairs,” I reply. Fake ramps. Fake access. Entire sections completely closed off as I am exiled to the other way—separated by back-entrance
elevators and interrupted by ableism.

It shouldn’t surprise me—I’ve been doing life without legs for 40-plus years. But I was stunned and enraged. I watched this thing being built from the beginning, I was its biggest fan. Before the stairs went in, I was so hopeful, I yearned for its potential.

Of course we’d put a beautiful new inclusive structure along our waterfront! We’re Seattle, after all! We are a big, modern, tech-forward city with lots of money, seeping with progressive ideals, right? Nope! For some reason, the City of Seattle chose, on purpose, to build an entire area meant for enjoying a walk along the water that marginalizes 25 percent of its population.

The freaking Colosseum is accessible, and that was built in the first century.

It’s lazy work, and any architects who are operating in this way are simply shit architects. We know better—we know that sticking a crappy elevator in the back is dated and ableist, right? So how did we let this happen?

When I was much younger, my older brother, an architect at the time, took me aside to tell me how cumbersome the ADA makes his job. How “keeping up with code” was a burden that I, and others like me, put on him with our existence, and how finding a place to throw an elevator in after you’ve completed all your designs was an annoying afterthought.

I didn’t fully digest the insulting ableism of his complaint until later in life—after learning about universal design.

Universal designers include access within their design, so spaces are equitable, simple, intuitive, and can be used by all people, without any additional adaptations. UD architecture generally looks better because they aren’t just pinning a very important element on at the end, as an afterthought. It’s fluid, inclusive, and stunning. And you already see it all the time: stairless entries, curb cuts, or no curbs at all! What can be harder to imagine, maybe, is sets of ramps and stairs so imaginatively designed that they are used in lock-step with one another as part of one design goal, to be used by all people. So that no one is going the other way, and no matter who you are, you experience the space in the same way.

The Overlook Walk is massive, as surely was the budget. Certainly, finding an inclusion solution was possible. I saw it with my very eyes, as it was being built.

There are no ADA police for this kind of oversight, so of course, it’s up to us crips, the marginalized, to say something to, do something. So that’s what I’m doing here, stirring the pot the only way I know how. I am always gonna write about it ’cause that’s what I can do. And you know the worst part? My favorite thing to do when I write is to take a stroll. Motherfuckers.