Subject: go-round # 2 with a particular hotel

I was working another occurrence of a convention last weekend, the prior
instance of which was about a year ago.  We, i.e. the full and/or part-time
barefooters who show up and help make the con happen, ran into some trouble
despite us thinking we'd fixed the problem last year.  They evidently got
a bunch of new people, and of course "be tolerant of guests' attire" never
gets into their training.

One of our principal tech folks got tossed from the bar, by some big burly
rude bartender who kept claiming it was a violation of "health code" and
wouldn't listen to any contrary facts.  The person in question knows me
quite well and my standpoint on this, agrees that it's largely unfounded
discrimination, and went straight to the hotel desk and asked for the general
manager.  He also alerted our senior convention staff that this crap was
happening *again*, and that sharp re-education was needed NOW.  When I heard
this was going on I happened to be near where my car was parked and popped
out to grab another one of my info-sheets, but it turned out it wasn't needed
because 1> the hotel already had it on file from last year, and 2> the
hotel-liaison person also had another copy in her purse from last year!  The
situation was quickly rectified and nobody ran into any more trouble in the
bar/restaurant area.  I don't know the fate of said rude bartender, but
hopefully he got suitably reprimanded.

Later, I was in a "feedback" session near the end of the festivities, where
people go to air what they liked or didn't like about the event, and another
attendee piped up and said "I can't believe the number of barefoot people
around this con, you know that's against health code, right?" ... to which
I immediately jumped in with "no it's not", there was a brief back-and-forth
which was clearly not going to get resolved so we moved on.  But the spare
info-sheet I had went into his hands as the session wrapped up, with "here's
the truth, maybe it can help you work on that unfounded phobia" or something
to that effect.  He didn't try to give the sheet back to me, so maybe there's
some hope that he'll understand.

After strike and loadout a bunch of us gathered for a very nice dinner in
said hotel restaurant, with three or four barefooters present, and we were
cordially treated.  In the interim another event had moved into the function
space, a big Indian gala of some sort, and as I went by where they were
setting up I told some of them about our episode with the hotel.  The big
question would be, if any of *their* people chose to go barefoot around the
place, would they get yelled at?  How selective is the hotel's "permission"
in this regard, I wonder?  It shouldn't be selective at all, and nobody
should ever get harassed about their footwear choices ever.  But I chose to
warn the incoming group and plant the seed of that question in their minds.
South Asian culture, as we've mentioned in the past, tends to be far more
barefoot tolerant than whitebread Americans, and I'm happy to patronize
establishments run by folks of such heratige because it's less likely that
any trouble will arise.