1175 N. 205th Street
Seattle, WA 98133
206.546.0480
www.costco.com

It feels good to shop at Costco because you know that the woman checking your groceries and the man serving you hot buttered bread are making an average of $20+ per hour—a living wage—along with receiving health benefits, vacation time, and sick leave.  Thank you Jeffrey Brotman, founder and chairman of Costco and a generous Seattle philanthropist;  Jim Sinegal, founder; and  Craig Jelinek, current CEO, for your vision!

Thank you also for your fine wines, delicious cheeses, big screen TVs, organic produce, diamond bracelets, gigantic jugs of mayonnaise, enormous bags of potato chips, stacks of pants of every size and color, patio furniture, beach towels, pots and pans, and air conditioners.

Thank you, also, for sometimes placing surprising things next to each other in the gigantic aisles—flags and electric toothbrushes, for example—and for the riot of color and texture that is your wonderful store.

Costco is a joyful noise for those of us in battery- or pusher-powered wheelchairs.  For those who push their own wheelchairs, it may also be a delight.  One improvement for us:  lap-sized baskets that we can carry.

Continue reading Costco →

4140 George Washington Lane NE
Seattle, WA 98105
(206) 543-4880
http://www.meany.org/

Over the years, I have seen beautiful, hilarious, moving, and thought-provoking performances at Meany Hall’s UW World Dance Series. These performances have opened my understanding of what it means to be a human being moving through time and space.  They also reveal the inspiring range of creative expression that the human mind is capable of producing, and, therefore, even the dances that are bewildering have a way of making me glad to be alive.

In some ways, sitting in my wheelchair and watching these gorgeous performances each year is agonizing, underscoring how unlike those graceful human bodies on stage my own body is.  In other ways, though, taking those performances into my heart and mind extends what I can do and celebrates the movement I share with all humans.  Lucky for me, then, and for other wheelchair travelers, that Meany Hall is completely accessible.

Continue reading Meany Hall for the Performing Arts →

15236 Aurora Ave N
Shoreline, WA 98133
206.362.8072
http://www.joann.com (website for all branches and online shopping)

My sewing days came to an end in a disastrous eighth grade sewing class.  At the end of that class, I had to throw myself on the mercy of my best friend’s mom., who finished my project the night before it was due.  I never broke the news to Mary Lynne’s mom that she had gotten a C- on that project.  I couldn’t really tell and didn’t want to ask the sewing teacher if Mary Lynne’s mom had gotten such a low grade because I had given her  a botched start to work with or because the  teacher had looked at my completed project and recognized that–given my progress to that date–I surely was not the one who finished it.  I was grateful for that C- and grateful to Mary Lynne’s mom for getting it for me, so being in a fabric store doesn’t fill me  with 14-year-old trauma.
Continue reading Jo-Ann Fabric and Craft →

11201 Roosevelt Way NE
Seattle, WA 98125
206.362.4810
http://www.displaycostume.com
Date of visit:  February 10, 2014 and many others

All of us have a place in the city that is more than just a place, a place that may express something important about our deepest selves, a place that can pull us out of the darkest despair and back into the light.  Display & Costume is that place for me.  It was the first place I visited after getting my wheelchair.  Rolling in the doors after almost a year away, I was starving for the sight of fuchsia feather boas, hungry for a glimpse of gold glitter in a dizzying array of glitter-piece sizes, yearning for the 64-crayon box of matching paper plate and napkin colors, desperate to try on mullet wigs in blonde AND brunette, and, of course, needing to pay the appropriate homage to all things tiara.

Continue reading Party@ Display & Costume →

301 N.E. 103rd Street
Seattle, WA 98125
http://www.regmovies.com/  –  general
http://www.showtimes.com/cinemas/regal-cinemas-thornton-place-stadium-14-imax-14641/  –  times
http://www.fandango.com/regalthorntonplacestadium1426imax_aaviy/theaterpage  –  online tickets
206.517.9953

Movie-going can be an anxious experience for wheelchair travelers because of all the uncertainties we can find in a new movie theater.   The Thornton Place Regal Cinemas makes going to a movie on wheels easy.  There are 14 theaters plus an IMAX at this complex but rarely 14 different movies showing.  Often you can see the same movie in several different ways—IMAX-ified, 3D, or old-school.  The theater also shows operas from the New York Met, ballet, and other performances at scheduled times on the big screen.

Continue reading Thornton Place Stadium 14 Cinemas & IMAX →