John Fogerty @ The Edgefield 6/17/12

Well, I'd love for this post to be purely an attempt by me to capture the gorgeousness of John Fogerty's performance last night, but duty calls and in keeping with this blog's mission to document the quality of wheelchair accommodations around Portland I must unfortunately focus upon that.....

My first experience at Edgefield was poor and I blogged about both it and its stunningly positive resolution here:http://www.crippledcritic.com/2010/08/praise-be-to-concert-god-dylan.html. My second experience landed me in the incomparable VIP seats, while I awaited the construction of the new wheelchair section:http://www.crippledcritic.com/2011/08/music-in-garden-of-eden-amos-lee.html

My third experience was Ray Lamontagne in the new, and vastly improved wheelchair section. I had an issue with one very inconsiderate concert-goer who blocked my view because she stood just outside the fire lane and the new platform was just barely too low to see past her.... But, with intervention from security and a hearty-dose of public-shaming, she eventually sat down....

Which brings me to Fogerty. Starting this year, Edgefield revised its policy and rather than give a GA ticket and wristband as they had done previously, they now had a separate official ADA ticket.... (No notice of the change was on the website, the way it was written implied that a GA ticket and ADA were the same, as I had assumed.) Only after on-sale time did I notice that ADA had a separate drop-down menu, which was no help to me because I had ordered mine over the phone. This meant a hassle to change my tickets as well as double service fees because there were technically two transactions. Despite this, I hoped that the change in policy would mean that people with severe disabilities would be given priority by virtue of this special-ticket.....e.g. the first few rows would be reserved for wheelchair-users.....

How wrong I was! In the ADA section I was one of only 3 wheelchair-users, the rest would definitely be considered comparatively able-bodied..... (Capable of standing and walking.) Two couples who would certainly fall into that category re-positioned the entire second-row which ruined the view completely for everyone else, the other patrons asked them politely to move and they refused..... (All of them were able to stand, and they did.....)

We tried to get security to intervene, but they would not. Frustrated, we decided to try our luck on the lawn.... On our way there, we passed wheelchair-users who were just outside of the ADA section, which I can only surmise was because they could not find a suitable view, ironic, huh? Someone was circulating a petition of complaint about the section which I of course signed. Security did eventually bring McMenamin's Chief Operating Officer to meet us, and I will be sending him a link to this post.... My feeling is one of profound disappointment in a venue of which I have become quite fond, hopefully this will change......