Alcatraz

Since the weather was perfect during our stay in San Francisco a couple of weeks ago, we alternatively walked, and took the cable cars around the city and did as many tourist things as we could; we have visited the city in the summer, at the height of tourist season, and the weather was worse, and all of the line ups for the attractions were too long. As a result, I'm familiar with the layout of the city, and have walked many of the streets, but aside from that, I've seen very few of the local highlights. So this time, armed with a 7 day pass, we saw the aquarium, the museum of modern art, rode across Golden Gate bridge, took a boat ride in the bay, and finally set foot on Alcatraz.

One of the definite highlights of the stay in this lovely city by the bay (and now Journey's "Lights" is playing in the background- at least it is in my head ) was our day trip to Alcatraz. On the day before the wedding, we took a one hour tour of the bay using one of our coupons. We left the pier and sailed directly for the Golden Gate Bridge while listening to a corny recording of Captain Nemo and an assorted collection of San Francisco "characters" tell us about the city, the bridge and eventually the island. We took a sharp right turn directly under the bridge, and went towards Alcatraz. My first impression of the island is that there were many more structures and pathways than I had anticipated; it was also a lot filled with lots more plants and trees than I had thought. Since we had promised my friend's brother that we would wait for him to go to the island, we deferred our visit to the ex-prison for the day after the wedding.

Upon arriving on the island, we followed all of the other tourists up the pathway past the ruins of the old buildings. The jail is really the only part of this island that is not in disrepair. We borrowed the earphones and tape and started our one hour tour of the facilities. I have not seen any of the famous Alcatraz movies, so for me this was entirely new. The celll block is divided into rows which bear famous names of american cities (like Broadway). The cells are two levels high and four or six rows wide, and probably about 15 cells long. I can't remember how many it could actually house, but the narrative mentioned that it had never been filled to capacity. There were descriptions offamous inmates, their crimes, attempts to break out (which I guess is why this place is really famous), and lots of details about daily life both for the inmates and for the many people (including children) who lived on the island. Some of the cells were open to walk in an see the prison from the perspective of the prisoner for a brief moment. The entire narrative was very engaging, and replete with tons of facts. The best spent hour of that day.

There is one more point that intrigues me and that will require a bit more research in order to include it in another post. In the late 60's, while the island was no longer used as a jail, and had reverted back to federal government property, it was occupied by a group of Native Americans. They used an piece of legislation that they claimed permitted them to claim any disused federal property as their own. They were unsuccesful in reclaiming it as Indian land, but they left their mark on one of the outside buildings. I'll see what other details I can find, and then add the photo and maybe a bit more history of the island as well.

I've put the slide show on here, but I am considering getting a smugmug account, so that I can load up more photos. Putting a small selection of photos on the slide show was a fine concept when I was only spening a couple of months here, and then had the ability to give you more lengthy, personal slide shows when in your town. But now that I anticipate being here for a bit longer, and don't know when I will see you next, it could be more useful to have more photos more often.