You know what’s crazy? I’ll tell you what’s crazy™
The Rock.
Alcatraz.
Once the home to the Birdman and Al Capone.
This expensive chunk of real estate in the San Francisco Bay is now home to sea gulls and Park Rangers.
This island fortress was one of America’s most desperate outposts in the middle of one America’s most beautiful cities.
People gather on the shore, point their cameras at the bay, and take pictures of this desolate hunk of rock.
People pose for photos as if it was the Golden Gate or a cable car or Fisherman’s Market.
But the Rock isn’t sunshine and rainbows.
It isn’t a feat of engineering wonder or a fish being tossed through the air.
The Rock is dark and historically diabolical.
It’s incarceration and isolation and desolation.
It’s concrete and steel and years of wasted time.
Perhaps that is why it is so intriguing.
The prison is a nefarious part of American history. It has a deeply dark attraction, like an Amsterdam street corner, that attracts humans from all over the globe.
Alcatraz is easily one of the city’s most popular tourist attractions.
In a city full of tourist attractions, it makes you say; Hmmmmm?
The Rock isn’t cheerful or airy.
It’s not Mickey Mouse ears and lollipops.
It’s about shanks and prison riots.
So I am in the City by the Bay with a multitude of options.
And what tour am I taking?
You guessed it.
The Alcatraz Tour is so popular, tickets must be purchased weeks in advance.
“I live right down the street,” an Alcatraz ticket taker tells me at the docks. “I can’t believe the crowds, how popular this is.”
I smile and shuffle through the line, waiting to get on the Ferry.
The sun is blaring an it is unseasonably hot.
I listen to accents from all over the world.
I wonder why German tourists care about the Rock.
Isn’t there an art museum to visit?
Not enough schnitzel downtown?
Don’t you want to see someone throw a fish to another guy who will catch it?
Maybe that’s Seattle. See I don’t know. You know why I don’t know? Because I’m not touring the fish market. I’m touring the Rock.
I listen to the German man speak to his German girlfriend.
Such a rough language. It sounds like broken glass rattling around in a tin pan.
Have they already seen the Golden Gate? I wonder.
How do you say Alcatraz in German?, I want to ask.
It probably sounds a lot like AHHL-KAHH-TRAZZ.
The prison closed in 1963 because it was too expensive to run.
Think about it; everything had to be brought to the island by boat. It’s expensive.
What this island lacks in supplies it more than makes up for in hardship.
If cold salt air and dreams vanquished and rusted iron bars and an iron fisted warden were natural resources, the Rock would be rich in deed.
Alcatraz is big in legend, but physically, it is surprisingly small. The average number of prisoners at any given time was only 260.
But these men were the worst of the worst.They were the killers, the robbers, the rapists.
As we board the ferry, the sun blares down on us.
It is hot, very very hot.
I shield my eyes and look at the city.
It is spectacular.
The Transamerica building isn’t as big as it looks on TV, but it is sexy.
It is triangular and white and it projects a sense of San Francisco.
The cable cars scoot downhill faster than I would have imagined. People hang off the side and the bell rings as you would expect.
The city by the bay is glistening in the sunshine. There is not a cloud in the sky. The fog, locals have nicknamed Carl, is out to lunch, reading a book, beyond the Golden Gate. This is a city known for fog, but today, fog is invisible.
It is flirting with 90 degrees and locals and tourists alike are sweating, complaining about the heat it in a multitude of languages.
“The coldest winter I ever spent was a summer in San Francisco,” someone once said. It’s rumored to be Mark Twain who said this, but this stirs much debate among San Franciscans.
Regardless of who said it, the quote is accurate. When the fog comes in, it’s like wearing a sweater that has been dipped in icy water.
I see an Asian woman. She is wearing a sweater.
What does she know that I do not, I ponder.
As the ferry backs out of pier 33, I can’t help but notice how clean this city is.
A rickshaw bikes zoom by. “bike tours of the city,” I hear the cyclist shout over the diesel engines that suddenly churn the green water below the boat.
We back out and begin to turn. The engines engage and the breeze of the bay refreshes as we begin the short, 15 minute boat ride to the island.
I gaze at the Golden Gate Bridge.
It’s not golden but it is red and regal and it too screams “Welcome to San Francisco.”
As we get to the rock, the hand painted sign alerts you that this is a Federal Penitentiary and Indians are welcome.
The island looks bleak and uninviting like the house on Halloween with the lights off.
At the bottom of the ramp the Park Ranger tells us that this is federally protected land “Do not take rocks. Do not take a feather. Do not go where it says not to go. You will be prosecuted,” he warns.
I don’t know if it is for effect, but it sets the seriousness, right from the start.
We climb the steep incline, 130 feet up, the equivalent of a 13 story building.
I am huffing and puffing as I reach the prison.
We follow the signs that say audio tour.
The 1st thing you see when you enter the foreboding facility, is the prison shower.
It’s an open rectangle with a labyrinth of pipes and shower heads, complete with soap.
It’s easy to imagine Al Capone standing here in his birthday suit, a machine gun trained on his junk.
We put on our ear phones and the audio tour guides us down narrow, dark walkways.
The only light filters in from opaque windows on the 2nd floor.
The narrator will tell us that these cells were the most desirable because prisoners could feel the sunshine and hear the laughter of New Years Eve parties in the distance.
I would think these cells would be like slow torture.
You sit in a 6X9 foot cell, your toilet the prominent feature in your living space, and you imagine what the rest of the world is doing in the sunshine of every day life.
Below, away from the windows, the prison is dark and dangerous, lined by prison cells.
The corridors are nicknamed Broadway and CD street.
It’s easy to imagine the worst humans on record standing at the cells, banging their cups against the bars, watching the new inmates walk down Broadway “in their birthday suits,” a gruff voice over the recorded tour will say.
The concrete that makes up the walls is discolored and worn by salt air and time.
There is what appears to be dried blood on the floor from a prison uprising that required the U.S. Marines to intervene.
The bars are thick and foreboding. Everything in this building feels cold and sterile and angry.
The cells are tiny and claustrophobic, barely large enough for a cot and a toiletry kit.
Alcatraz was once a symbol of federal toughness.
Do the crime, and if you were bad enough? You’d do the time on the Rock.
Now it is a State Park and a money-making destination for tourists.
Alcatraz began as an Army Fortress in the Civil War, then it became a military prison.
From military prison, it became a Maximum security federal penitentiary.
Today it is a storied place of legends.
It has been immortalized in movies such as the ROCK and Escape From Alcatraz, starring Clint Eastwood.
As we push forward through the bowels of the building, a gravely voiced narrator tells us about life on the Rock. We hear sea gulls in the distance and cell doors slamming.
The audio is complete with guards and ex-cons and secretaries all telling stories about the maximum security facility.
We see the dining hall and the narrator tells about riots and what it sounds like when a kitchen knife rips through a man’s lungs and tears into a man’s spine.
We hear about the famous escape, in 1962, made popular by Clint Eastwood. We see the cells and the bunks where they fashioned heads out of paper machete and cut through concrete with kitchen spoons.
The narrator is quick to tell us that in 29 years as a Federal Prison, 36 prisoners tried to escape the Rock. All but five were recaptured.
We enter the isolation chamber and imagine what it must have been like with the door closed. It is a 5 foot by 5 foot box. The concrete is cold and cracked. The steel door thick. In a facility of harshness, this area is desolate, frightening, like living in a coffin buried in sand.
The tour takes us outside. The brilliant sunshine of San Francisco fills our eyes. I have to squint. The fresh air is magnificent and brings me back to life.
I have only been captive for 30 minutes and I feel like a house plant that is finally watered and placed in the light.
I marvel at the spectacular city and realize that the location of this prison is part of the punishment.
It’s like sitting outside the last supper, wanting to drink from the goblet with Jesus and the Apostles.
Instead, you sit in the dirt and imagine the magnificence that is going on beyond your view.
I enjoy the tour. I also enjoy leaving the Rock.
I look back at the tiny island fortress as we chug back to Pier 33.
I stare at the Golden Gate and appreciate the beauty, the freedom, the sunshine on my face.
Life’s Crazy™