The effort started last fall when Kari Johnston, owner of Reimagine Gifts, learned in her work at The Metropolis that a bridesmaid in a wedding would not be able to be on the stage because there was no ramp. Installing a ramp wasn’t feasible due to the height of the stage.
In talking to disability experts in the county, Johnston, who also works with disabled individuals, said she learned the best option was a wheelchair lift rather than a ramp, because it is more mobile and can fit in a lot more spaces. A ramp would need to be sized to bring a person up to a certain height.
“We could use it for our events but we could also lend it out to anyone for any of the festivals or any of the other historic buildings that have accessibility challenges,” Johnston said.
The county no longer has a lending library for disability equipment due to funding challenges, and it never had a wheelchair lift.
“The thing that really stuck with me was they said, ‘We actually get calls pretty regularly for that kind of thing,‘” Johnston said. “My husband — it’s a running joke with us — (was) like, ‘Please don’t tell Kari things like that or she won’t be able to sleep until it’s solved.‘”
After several months of fundraising did not yield results, Nathaniel Beard, a local drag queen who goes by National Holiday, reached out to Johnston and asked if he could help. Beard said a friend who uses a wheelchair wanted to watch him and other queens perform at the Stone Crow Pub, but couldn’t without a ramp. The bar’s owner plans to put one in, so Beard said he turned his energy to helping elsewhere.
“It did start the thought process of, ‘Wow, she’s probably got a big list of places that she won’t even go,’ because again, Springfield has a lot of historic buildings that you can’t just add onto,” Beard said. “Like you just walk downtown and you see places that have big steps and stuff and no wheelchair ramp accessibility, so something like a mobile wheelchair [lift] would help her and other people out immensely.”
National Holiday will perform along with entertainers Vodka Cox and Shelby C. Nightly at 9 p.m. May 10 at the Stone Crow Pub, 5 N. Murray St., on the east side of downtown Springfield. All the money raised will be donated to the mobile lift effort.
Springfield has a diverse LGBTQ community, Beard said, and is “running out of safe spaces to congregate and perform at,” urging people to support places like the Stone Crow Pub.
“Drag queens are the perfect representation of an underserved minority of people who use a stage to feel empowered,” Johnston said. “So the fact that they would want that for everyone is just ... poetic, in my mind.”
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