Putting in Time at Alcatraz

Sunday morning in San Francisco, we'd booked tickets on the ferry to Alcatraz Island, and went to tour the old prison. Though it was a beautiful, sunny day, the place felt dark and haunted. I can't think of another place I've visited that felt so oppressive and ominous. My boyfriend mentioned his visit to the Anne Frank house. I'm certain a visit to a German concentration camp would rank. In any case, you can easily get a sense for the tone of the place.


I suppose in my mind, I had a picture of the place being larger, even confined on a small island as it is. But the truth is, there just aren't that many rooms needed for a prison. The island has a number of outbuildings that provided housing for some of the prison guards, but the prison itself is straightforward: a basement area for processing and showering prisoners, the cell block above, a library, an office, an exercise yard, a dining hall. That's about it.

I perhaps had a mental image of multiple cell blocks in different wings or something, but all the cells were basically in one large room, stacked three high, divided by three "hallways." More like stacked shipyard crates than anything else -- though there was a separate corridor used for maximum security, and six cells for solitary confinement, in pitch blackness. (Stepping in one of those definitely made my heart speed up.)

Alcatraz is in a beat-up, rundown condition:


One of the reasons it was closed as a prison in the first place was that the cost of maintaining it had grown too high. Intellectually, you know you're looking at 50 years of decay, and that the place surely didn't look like this -- smashed windows, encroaching mold -- in its heyday. And yet, it's probably more appropriate that it does look this way. I imagine that it captures the feel of the place perfectly.

It might not seem like a souvenir of this place would be high on the list, but a unique option presented itself, and I couldn't pass it up. Near the end of the prison's run, surplus naval pea coats were issued to the inmates as cold weather gear for time in the yard -- simple, black wool coats. They didn't really look any different from coats many people have and wear today. The Alcatraz gift shop had these coats for sale. An old photo of the prison is sewn into the inner lining to mark it a souvenir, but when you're wearing it? It just looks like a black pea coat. So I picked it up, a souvenir unique in being completely functional.

That took care of the morning. In the evening, we'd head to Muir Woods -- an excursion I'll pick up next time.