The One About Thoughtful Cafe Design

for Alice.

Hi, good to see you.

Um, let's talk about straws a little bit more.

If we're gonna end on it, let's talk about straws.

Uh, just for the benefit of anyone in the audience, maybe we can talk a little bit more about, you know, if everyone knows, uh, in San Francisco, starting July 1st, um, straws, like, disposable straws, period, are, they're supposed to be kept behind the counter and only given when someone asks for it.

So that was through conversations with people like Alice and just doing some of my own research realizing how discriminating that is and how ableist that ends up being by creating this different bar for disabled people to have to jump through a hoop just to be able to drink.

And the fact that, you know, and I learned through interactions like with Alice that straws were invented for disabled people to be able to use and then to have them taken away because people can feel like they're being more environmentally sensitive or whatever you want to call it.

Maybe they'll save that turtle with the straw stuck up its nose, I don't know.

But I'll just comment one thing as a cafe owner, realizing that the city board of supervisors, the person who pushed this legislation forward, they could have waited, they could have created a situation that would have inspired the straw manufacturers to create something that would be sustainable, but also meet all the requirements that disabled people need in terms of accommodation.

but it was more important to push it through than to actually maybe see that sort of development happen and That really sucks.

So that all said at our cafe We quietly still have plastic straws available for everyone who needs them As far as I know the city is not planning to enforce this yet, but we're considering taking working with maybe an organization like the ACLU to actually file against the city, they can wait, they can do this in a way that actually puts things in the right sequence rather than just doing this outright thing, taking something that's literally like provides liquid for people and yeah.

So but that said, I don't think that everyone understands the issues around why the straw ban isn't just a simple environmental issue.

So Alice, can you talk about that a little bit?

Okay, I'm going to try to give a super short overview.

So I do want to say that Nick is an example of somebody that I think of as an ally because He's willing to learn and he takes action.

And he's showing solidarity with disabled folks by actually believing what they say, which I think is still sometimes, I think that a lot of non-disabled folks just sometimes do not understand is that especially online, you know, a lot of disabled people have been saying, you know, there's various reasons, very legitimate reasons why, uh, you know, compostable metal, glass, those kind of straws are actually hazards for them.

And plastic straws, often for people who have, like, who are immunosuppressed, who need single use for infection prevention.

You know, there's a lot of different reasons people still use plastic.

And, you know, to be shaped for that.

There's a lot of bars and cafes that just are so woke and they put these signs to say we don't have any plastic.

And, you know, they do this because, you know, in an effort to be sustainable, but what they're often doing is completely ignoring the very legitimate needs of disabled people.

And I think that's been the real tension of this ordinance that was passed because a lot of states and cities have these.

Oh, they say, oh, we have these exemptions that we're going to allow this group of people to have straws by request.

And, you know, that's better than nothing, but...

It's not equality in my mind when a non-disabled person doesn't even have to think about that stuff.