I appears that the Mezz Night Club at Dublin's Temple bar has taken its design inspiration from Latin American magical realism. Or maybe it was J.K. Rowling.
Harry Potter has his Gate 9 3/4 at King's Cross Station to catch the Hogwart's Express on his annual trip to the School of Magic. Patrons of the Temple bar make their urgent pilgrimage to a red door emblazoned with a gold accessibility logo and then invoke a few choice words themselves...
Advocate: Fake Restroom Door Is 'Completely Ludicrous'
By Dave Reynolds, Inclusion Daily Express
January 26, 2005
DUBLIN, IRELAND--The red door with a gold wheelchair sign at the Mezz night club in Dublin's Temple bar looks like any other letting patrons with disabilities know there is an accessible restroom behind it.
But looks can be deceiving.
In fact, this door is not really a door at all; it is simply built into the wall, with nothing behind it except more of the club. When customers ask about getting the door opened, they are told it is locked "for renovations".
Local disability rights advocates are annoyed at the club, because several wheelchairs have gone to the door only to find that it is locked.
"To have a door in a wall, pretending it's accessible to disabled people, is completely ludicrous," Mary Keogh, director of the Forum for People with Disabilities told the Dublin Business Post. "I don't know who they're trying to fool."
Mezz manager Peter Wickham told the Post he did not know about the fake restroom door, explaining that he had had just returned to the bar after being gone for a year and a half.
"Whatever structural changes have been made, I'm not aware of them," Wickham said, adding that the club did have a working, accessible restroom when he worked there before.
He acknowledged that Irish law requires bars and pubs built or renovated after 1991 to provide accessible restrooms, and said that no pub should pretend to have a toilet it does not have.
Wickham said he would bring up the issue of the bogus door with the bar's owners.
Related:
Forum of People with Disabilities
http://www.inforum.ie