Confessions of a Western Wino: California Gold: Alcatraz Island, San Francisco

Vintage firetruck on display on
the island

Text and photos by Jason McKenney

On the night of June 11, 1962, inmates Clarence Anglin, his brother John Anglin, and Frank Morris tucked papier-mâché heads resembling their own likenesses into their cold beds. They proceeded to break out of the main prison building via an unused utility corridor, and departed Alcatraz Island aboard an improvised inflatable raft, never to be heard from again. It's likely the men drowned in the chilly waters of San Francisco Bay long before reaching their intended destination of Angel Island to the north. It's possible their bones are still down there in the murky green water that beautiful sailboats criss cross on a daily basis. They're down there, resting uneasily, staring up with hollow sockets at an unachievable freedom for eternity.

Approaching the prison by boat

Alcatraz is filled with many weird and evocative stories like this one. Papier-mâché heads, Indian land reclamation, haunted corridors. So goes the history of an island that was once a Civil War era citadel, then the location of a US Military Prison, a Federal Penitentiary, and that today is a state park and museum.

I made a visit to the island and toured the prison with my parents during a trip to San Francisco. We rode the daily tinder from Pier 33 off The Embarcadero out to the island on a gorgeous day below a cloudless sky. The island sits between the Golden Gate Bridge to the west and the artificial Treasure Island to the east. Its more modern cousins sits a few miles north up the bay in the form of San Quentin State Prison, an over-populated jail that will probably provide its own fun tours and experiences to the public at some point when it eventually shuts down.

A tour of Alcatraz includes a brief history of the prison, a list of some of the more famous inmates who passed through, descriptions of daily life, and insights into the beauty that the island provides today (namely being a natural habitat for various birds and plants that call the island home). The small island was developed with facilities for a lighthouse (which today is the oldest operating lighthouse on the West Coast), a military fortification, a military prison (back in 1868), and a federal prison from 1933 until it was shut down 1963.

Beginning in November 1969, the island was occupied for more than 19 months by a group of Native American people from San Francisco who were part of a wave of activism across the nation with public protests through the 1970s. In 1972, Alcatraz became a national recreation area and received designation as a National Historic Landmark in 1986.

Golden Gate in the distance

Our tour included a self-guided portion where one can wear headphones giving lurid tales of foiled escapes, bloody prison fights, and other such hijinx that happens when you have hundreds of criminals locked up on an island for long periods of time. Locked up behind bars where the sounds of a partying San Francisco could be heard wafting in across the bay from the city each night. A city that was not far away, but impossible to reach.

There allegedly are spirits of dead prisoners still roaming the dark halls. I took extra photos in hopes of catching a shape or an orb or anything that might possibly be an apparition. No luck as usual. The only ghosts here are in your mind as you think back to what it must have been like to be trapped in

Alcatraz . . . and sailing.

such a horrid concrete box. Prisoners trapped in their own Phantom Zone, forever awaiting escape, some willing to risk their lives just for the opportunity to swim in shark-infested waters. Must have been rough. But no need to dwell on such dismal thoughts for too long. Speaking of wafting across the bay, I can hear Fog Harbor Fish House and a zesty Shellfish Tower calling my name for lunch.