Alcatraz

Started: 2025-02-15 15:08:52

Submitted: 2025-02-15 22:40:39

Visibility: World-readable

Visiting a notorious federal prison

For MLK Day I took the kids to see Alcatraz, visiting the notorious former federal prison on the same day that an infamous con-man was being inaugurated president on the other side of the country. (Kiesa went to visit her parents for the long weekend after they missed out joining is in Hawaii after Christmas.)

We took BART into San Francisco and walked up the Embarcadero to Alcatraz Landing, then waited for our 11:30 departure. Julian needed a break after our brisk walk up the Embarcadero (which probably means we need to take him on more hikes) and eventually got up to look at the model of the island to get an idea of what we were about to see.

We lined up and boarded our boat to head across the bay to the strategically-placed island in the middle of the bay, immediately across from the Golden Gate. It was a bright sunny winter day and we could see both bridges and the entire city skyline from our seat on the second deck of the ferry.

Fifteen minutes after leaving San Francisco the boat pulled into the ferry dock on the south-eastern side of Alcatraz, then we joined the rest of passengers shuffling off the boat onto the island.

We listened to a park ranger talk about the history of the island and what we could see (and how to get around the island), then found a park bench on the edge of the dock to eat the lunches we brought before walking up the access road towards the cellhouse on the island's summit.

To get there we passed through the gatehouse, protected by a small canon on a rotating mount to aim at hypothetical invaders attacking via the dock. (Like every American military fortification on the west coast, Alcatraz was never attacked while it was a military fort, though whether that's because of the strength of the fortification or other geopolitical factors remains an interesting counter-factual.)

Along the access road to the cellhouse were several reinforced concrete buildings, most of which dated from the island's history as a military fort (before the turn of the last century) or a federal prison (from 1934 to 1963). The military barracks in Building 64, which had been converted into prison guard housing, loomed over the dock and remained intact (including a small gift shop on the ground floor next to the dock), but other buildings had been gutted in fires in 1970 during the American Indian occupation of the island in an attempt to reclaim their ancestral lands after centuries of Spanish and American rule. One of these buildings was the military Post Exchange, which was converted into an Officer's Club during the prison era. The reinforced concrete shells remained, supported in places by new steel beams to keep what remained of the structure from collapsing under its own weight, but all of the floors and finishings and contents and roofs had burned or disintegrated, leaving the building open to the weather in the middle of the bay.

We followed the access road switching back and forth up the slope to the summit of the island and stepped into the cellhouse. (This was the point where I swapped my camera's lens to a wide-angle lens to help capture the cramped indoor spaces.) We walked through the shower room on the ground floor, where incoming prisoners (transferred from other prisons) would dress in Alcatraz-issued prison clothing. This was the point where we received our audio tours of the cellhouse from a talkative guy who asked where we were from (Santa Cruz) and then proceeded to rattle off a bunch of local businesses and landmarks in the city.

On the far side of the showers we climbed one flight of stairs into the main cellhouse, and found ourselves on the wide corridor looking up at three stacks of concrete cells under bright skylights.

We stepped forward to the signs indicating where we were supposed to start the audio tour and hit play. Once we started the tour it played through all the way to the end without stopping, moving us through the cellhouse at a pace that made it hard to linger and appreciate the historic grounds we were walking through. The audio tour was narrated by prisoners who had been confined at Alcatraz and prison guards who had worked at Alcatraz, and there were display boards set up to show us their pictures as they introduced themselves on the audio. (The prison closed in 1963 and it wasn't clear when the audio had been recorded, since we're passing the era when people who were involved in Alcatraz as a prison would still be alive.)

The tour took us down the corridors through the prison, looking into the cells and trying to imagine what life would have been like for people who were imprisoned here. Most of the cells were bare and locked, but some were equipped with the standard-issue cot and prison clothing. Some were decorated as they would have been by prisoners who lived there.

The last group of cells, D-Block, was labeled the "treatment unit" where prisoners who broke Alcatraz' rules would be placed. This included solitary-confident cells, and dungeon-like cells with two layers of locked solid doors to cut off the cell from outside light. The lights inside the cell were supposed to be on 24/7 but they were in practice always turned off, placing the occupant in complete darkness. (The audio guide didn't quite pose the question about whether this was cruel and unusual punishment, but I felt like it was implied and the answer was yes.)

In one of the cells we saw a recreation of the dummies that several prisoners made of themselves so they could escape by widening the vent to the utility corridor then squeeze into the corridor, climb onto the roof, and disappear into the night. These escaped prisoners were never found so no one knows if they drowned while swimming to freedom or if they reached the shore and disappeared back into civilian life.

The tour took us into the dining hall, where there was an extra exhibit encouraging us to consider the impact of mass incarceration in this country. The audio tour wrapped up in the dining hall, but rather than follow the stairs down to exit via the gift shop I headed out into the recreation yard to look at the concrete expanse enclosed in a high wall with walkways for armed guards.

The gate outside the wall was open, giving us the chance to look out at the bay and the Golden Gate. There was a ferry circling the island playing a recording talking about the island for tourists who didn't visit the island itself (or, in the summer, when the ferry tickets onto the island were sold out), which we could hear from the edge of the recreation yard.

We exited the cellhouse via the gift shop and circled around to walk through the administration part of the building, now open to the cellhouse. This had a few displays about the guards who worked at the prison, but was mostly a series of empty rooms connected to each other with larger windows looking out at the island. The most interesting to me was the control room, which was missing the security camera monitors that would be present in any modern prison control room.

We left the administration building and looked around the rest of the island. From the edge of the plaza in front of the building, where workers seemed to be setting up some sort of (possibly temporary) structure, we could look across the parade grounds to the San Francisco skyline. The Bay Bridge opened a couple of years after the prison opened, but the rest of the skyline is unrecognizable after 90 years of change.

We followed the access road as far as it would take us on the west side of the island, past a series of gardens below the cellhouse, above cliffs where sea birds nested without interference from land mammals.

We walked the long way around the island, following the road counter-clockwise towards the Model Industries building at the north tip of the island. Along the way we saw a restored old fire engine and looked down into the island's old powerhouse, a marvel of barely-arrested decay. Signs in front of the powerhouse told us that the island's power needs are now served by solar and batteries, which are still located around the old powerhouse.

We looked through the fence at the Model Industries building, a reinforced concrete building decaying in the harsh salt spray like the rest of the buildings on the island. This building was large and unrestored and looked like it would might collapse at any moment. The New Industries building was supposed to be open with exhibits, but the building was closed when we arrived so we couldn't visit.

By this point we'd seen everything there was to see on the island, so we headed back to the dock to catch the next ferry back to San Francisco.

When we reached the mainland it was the middle of the afternoon. I suggested to the kids that we might go get ice cream (which they thought was a good idea) and that we should go to BiRite Creamery in the Mission (which they also agreed to). We walked down the Embarcadero and caught a MUNI J train to Dolores Park then walked a block down 18th to BiRite Creamery. The line was only out the door (not around the block), giving us plenty of time to study the menu and figure out what we wanted to eat. I got three fruity flavors in a waffle cup and we walked across the street to sit in the grass in Dolores Park and eat our ice cream. It had been bright and sunny as we waited in line but by the time we got our ice cream the park was in shadows behind the local hills, so it was approaching chilly as we finished out ice cream.

We walked to 16th Street/Mission and caught BART to Daly City, then headed to Mod Pizza in Daly City for supper. When we arrived the door was locked without explanation, though there were still people inside. We went to Super Duper next door and ordered food, but it seemed to take a long time to get our food and there seemed to be some drama around the food preparation, including a large gaggle of employees standing behind the counter looking confused. Eventually it emerged that there had been a gas leak somewhere in the shopping center earlier in the day and PG&E had shut off the gas service while they investigated the leak. By the time we arrived the leak still wasn't fixed but PG&E had cobbled together a temporary service so the restaurant could still operate, but it wasn't enough gas for Super Duper to be able to run at full capacity. (This also explained why there were a bunch of utility trucks obstructing part of the parking lot.) Before we got our food the staff had pivoted to declining orders for anything that required a fryer or griddle (so they were basically left serving soft-serve ice cream), but they had taken our order so they got us our food eventually, along with a coupon for ice cream on a future visit as an apology.

We headed back home to Santa Cruz after supper, after an interesting day exploring Alcatraz.

I took a bunch of pictures at Alcatraz; they're all available at Photos on 2025-01-20.