Bonus Chapter 2: Welcome To The Rock
On Easter morning we got ourselves dressed and ready and then headed off to prison.
We drove back into the city. Amazingly, traffic was much less heavy at 8:00 on a Sunday morning. It made for a pleasant drive along the waterfront as we drove along the Embarcadero downtown. Through my
advanced research techniques, I was able to find a parking garage at 80 Francisco St. where I could park for a flat $20 all day. It also just happened to be within a city block’s walk of Pier 33. And Pier 33 just happens to be where the cruise boats depart for
Alcatraz Island.
Alcatraz, of course, is the famous island prison (also known as “The Rock”) that housed some of the United States’ most notorious criminals (Al Capone is probably the most famous). It began as a military outpost back in 1850, and started serving as a military prison as early as 1859. It officially become a Federal Penitentiary in 1934 and operated for 29 years until its closure in 1963 due to the cost of operation and the erosion of the buildings from salt water saturation. Native American activists occupied the island for almost 2 years starting in late 1969 as part of a protest of U.S. policies regarding attempts to end federal recognition of their tribes. The island became part of the Golden Gate National Recreation Area in 1972 and has been managed by the National Park Service ever since.
Visiting Alcatraz is free, but getting to the island is not. Tours are managed by
Alcatraz Cruises. You can buy tickets and reserve space on a cruise at their website starting 3 months in advance of your desired tour date. Having been in Disney planning mode for years, I reserved our cruise on the very first day it was available. I also went for the “Earlybird Cruise”, which costs the same as every other regular tour but has the advantage of being the very first cruise of the day. Because Rope Drop always works.
Yes, I know, these tickets are reserved, so we’d be guaranteed to get in anyway. Shut up.
We walked to the pier and felt like royalty as we skipped the long line of people attempting to buy tickets for later that day. We picked up our tickets from the Will Call window and then got in line with a few hundred of our closest friends. There’s a neat, detailed model of the island at the pier. Our tour boat is behind it in this photo.
Looking back towards the city, we could see
Coit Tower behind us.
After making our way through the queue, taking the obligatory green-screen photo which we had no intentions of buying or even looking at and listening to the obligatory safety spiel, we finally were allowed to board the ship. It was surprisingly swanky inside.
I didn’t stay inside very long. It was another beautiful, clear day and there were great views of the Bay Area to be had on the upper decks.
The Bay Bridge to Oakland:
Alcatraz Island to our north:
The San Francisco skyline to our south:
It took about 15-20 minutes to reach the island.
Once we were there, a volunteer tried to gather everyone around so he could go over the layout of the island and some of the ground rules for visitors. No matter how much he begged people to stay and listen, several of them wandered off and started exploring on their own, because people are jerks.
Once the talk was over, we started climbing up the various switchback roads to the top of the hill where the prison building sat. The price of the cruise includes a 45-minute audio tour of the prison, so we figured that was as good a place as any to start.
I must confess to a vague sense of disappointment that I did not see Sean Connery, Nicolas Cage, or Ed Harris running around yelling about chemical weapons.
We made our way into the prison itself and got in line to collect our audio tour apparatus and get trained on how to properly operate it.
(Hint: you press “Play” to play the recording, and “Stop” to stop it. You’re welcome.)
The first hallway was a bit crowded to start, but we found that the crowds dispersed in short order as people went through the tour at their own pace. The tour is narrated by actual prison guards and inmates who either worked or were imprisoned at Alcatraz. It was very well done, and I highly recommend it to anyone visiting San Francisco.
Here’s a typical cell. It reminds me of a Country Inn near Atlanta we once stayed in.
This is the “recreation yard”. Nothing better than playing baseball on a concrete field!
This is D Block, where the worst of the worst prisoners were kept. These were the prisoners who attacked guards or fellow inmates, tried to hide weapons, and attempted to use last year's refillable mugs at the resorts. The bottom floor was for prisoners kept in solitary confinement. The infamous “Birdman of Alcatraz”, Robert Stroud, spent some time here, since he was a particularly vicious character.
This was the prison library, or “li-berry” as the narrator kept saying to our endless amusement. The cells near here faced the windows that opened out to the city. According to the narrator, they particularly loved New Year’s Eve. If the winds were right, the sounds of music and women laughing would carry all the way over to the island from downtown.
Prisoners found all sorts of ways to pass the time. I don’t know if these are actual paintings or just meant to be representative of their work.
This was the control room, where guards worked and monitored the prisoners and their visitors. We learned the story of one escape attempt where the prisoners managed to overpower some of the guards and gain access to the weapons cache. It resulted in a standoff and a raid of the building. Some of the perpetrators were eventually killed when grenades were dropped into the hallway in which they were standing—you could still see cracks in the floor (not in the room pictured) from the blasts.
Just outside the control room were some more scenic views of the city.
Near the end of the tour, we were led back inside to the cells and told the story of the 3 men who managed to “escape” from Alcatraz. Three prisoners managed to steal silverware from the kitchen and fashion the spoons into primitive tools, which they used to dig/widen the opening into the air vent at the back wall of their cells. By crawling through that opening, they could access a utility corridor behind the cell. They climbed up the pipes in that corridor to access the roof. To fool the guards, they molded plaster casts of their heads to make it look like someone was sleeping in the bed. And they built a raft out of raincoats they collected over several months to attempt to get to shore.
Their escape was discovered when they didn’t report for a muster. The guards checked their cell and found something was up when they pulled back the sheets and the “prisoner’s” head fell to the floor.
No one knows if they ever made it to shore. Officially, they are presumed to have drowned somewhere in San Francisco Bay. The waters of the bay are extremely choppy due to the ever-present winds and currents, and thus extremely difficult to navigate. I should note, however, that the Mythbusters attempted an escape from Alcatraz using the same materials and procedure as the prisoners, and were in fact able to reach shore. They ruled the escape as being “plausible”.
We finished our tour in the dining hall, which was considered the most dangerous room in the prison due to the abundance of weapons available (knives, forks, etc.). There was even a large wooden board in the kitchen where the chef’s cleavers were hung—all of them had a black outline in the shape of the blades painted on the board so that guards could take a quick look and determine if any of them were missing.
The tour was really interesting, and I felt like it was well worth the time spent. But perhaps the most amazing thing about it was the fact that Drew got his own headphones and paid attention the whole way through. He absolutely loved it. My guess is that the way the tour was structured, we were constantly being told to go stand over here, find this sign, find that cell, etc. So I think it might have seemed like a scavenger hunt to him. Whatever the reason, I’m glad he enjoyed it and paid such good attention.
We spent a couple of hours on the island. They had a film they showed in the visitor center near the dock, but from what I could tell it covered much of the same material as the tour, so I didn’t feel the need to sit through it.
Naturally, we spent some time in the gift shop. Our favorite items by far were the signs/postcards listing the various rules and regulations of Alcatraz Federal Penitentiary. Julie bought a whole book of them to post in her classroom, while this one came home to be hung in our kitchen:
At about 11:00, we re-boarded the ship for the cruise back to the city.
From there, we walked down the street a block to the train stop. Everybody knows about the famous historic cable cars running through downtown San Francisco, but they also have historic electric street cars that run along the Embarcadero. You can download the Munimobile app on your phone and buy passes for any of the Muni transit services in the city. Since we intended to ride the cable cars later in the day, we got all-day passes for the family. I could store them all on my phone so that no one else needed a ticket.
Of course, once we boarded, not a single person asked for a ticket or fare. Go figure.
Some of these cars were originally made in the 1930’s. They ran in various cities across the country, and now San Francisco has restored and found a home for them.
Normally, I would have been able to take the “E” route to my next destination, but it was shut down for construction work. So we ended up having to take a convoluted path to transfer to a regular Muni train on Market St. Luckily, we were able to figure it out without too much trouble.
Where were we headed?
I’ll tell you next time.
Coming Up Next: I SAID I’D TELL YOU NEXT TIME! Sheesh.
Whoa. Talk about over-kill. Not exactly worried about casualties...
