I'm not even sure how to write this without sounding like a winy idiot, but here goes:

Yesterday I was in Glasgow, Scotland for a concert. I was supposed to be lining up with a contact I made from Reddit, but unfortunately they ghosted me after I requested them to walk 10 minutes with me from the train station to the concert (could have done it on my own except for busy roads). No big deal, I took an Uber.

I queue up in the line and wait 20 minutes to get in. I have a General Admission (standing) ticket, and after door security scan my ticket the manager asks me if I want to be seated instead. I politely decline as I purchased a GA ticket because I wanted to be standing at the front, and he insists for health and safety reasons I need to be in a seated area in case I get pushed etc. I tell him I've been to tons of concerts where I've been standing in GA, have been pushed and have been fine. He clearly doesn't believe me because he told me if I don't stay in a seated area, he can't allow me into the event. So of course I caved in and went to the seat he told one of his staff to take me to. The concert, however, was fantastic! I made this an incredible experience for myself by getting stoned AF, standing right in front of the low railing (I was on a balcony, why didn't they get scared I might lean too forward and topple over?) and imagining myself watching the crowd and the artist from high above while dancing alone.

The next train home was tomorrow, so after the concert I decided to go and watch a movie. I bought a ticket for one of these theaters where the seats move around when there's some action going on (I can't describe it very well since I didn't actually get to watch it).
All was fine until just before the movie started. One of the supervisors came up to me and said that for health and safety reasons, they can't allow me into the movie because "they don't want my legs to get hurt" (WTF?) and that this Japanese company whose technology it was had a set of rules where people with heart conditions and pregnant women for example should not sit on those seats. Apparently blind and disabled people were on that list too, and if they'd let me in and I'd got injured they'd be forced to shut down the cinema. The manager told me the same thing and I managed to get that captured on recording, just in case.
But honestly how is being blind comparable to having a heart condition or being pregnant? If a sighted person wouldn't know when the seats are about to move, how would somebody who is blind?
So then I tried to watch the same movie in a regular theater with an AD headset they provided, unfortunately the headset wasn't actually working and by the time I attempted to troubleshoot the headset, failed and spent 5 minutes locating the exit of the theater (it was too loud to use remote assistant services) and spoke to a manager, I'd missed half an hour of the movie. So even though they offered me a replacement headset it would have been pointless.

Finally, I decided to round off the night going to a few clubs which were near. I got refused into all of them - one told me they had a policy of not letting anyone in who was alone (fair enough, I respect that), but the other two said they couldn't let me in because I'm blind, it was very crowded and they didn't want me to get "pushed over" and if anything happened to me I wouldn't have anyone to take care of me. So I phone my friend for a while and he helped me deal with a lot of this and encouraged me to call it a night and find a place to sleep (thank you J!❤️).

I missed out the parts where a drunk scumbag was asking to "have a go at using my cane", a few people told me I shouldn't be out alone because I have no one to help me etc. The usual bullshit.

What am I really supposed to do about these things in a country I don't even live in? I already have enough on my plait without spending time taking these people to court. Even if I did, how far would it actually get me? It's not going to fix every ignorant person's mindset when it comes to people with disabilities.


TL;DR: refused GA in a concert venue for being blind, refused entry into a movie with moving seats for being blind,, refused entry into two nightclubs for being blind.

Probably hard to believe some of what I wrote, but this entire post is factual.

Thanks for reading.

Edit: people can take away from or do whatever they want, but they can NEVER take away your integrity. That is one of the most important things you have control of. Stay strong!