On the ferry ride over, a wall of fog was engulfing the Golden Gate bridge. I didn't realize there was an Arrowhead Project lab in Marin.
A view of the island as we approached. The large building on top of the hill is the cell block. The lower building is the San Francisco DMV.
This is where Red snuck in Andy's rock hammer.
I don't have a joke here, other than to say that if Andy had heeded this warning all that trouble with Boggs never would have started.
A spiral staircase; this just looks cool.
The audio tour got a thousand times better when I heard Lando's buttery voice. I immediately set out in search of Boba Fett's old cell.
Looking down the cell block. Some water just went down my windpipe while I was drinking, so there's no joke for this one; I'm still coughing too hard.
This reminded me of the camera shot as the prisoners are walked into Shawshank for the first time. Fresh fish.
Every cell in Alcatraz is a single, and every cell in Alcatraz is very small. The prisoners spent the majority of their time in their cells, as Alcatraz had much less free time than other prisons. I believe the aim was to keep the prisoners in isolation to prevent fights and escape attempts. The saying was "When you break the rules, you go to prison. When you break the prison rules, you go to Alcatraz."
A closer look at the cell.
The first time Kristine and I smooched was on a camping trip. She had just gotten a new sleeping pad, and I had no gear so she let me use her old sleeping pad. Somehow, that sleeping pad made it into Alcatraz; I think slept about 40 minutes that night, because that sleeping pad was like a street grate.
This is an ex-guard demonstrating how to open an individual cell. He was really personable, though it's hard to hear his voice here.
And here he is demonstrating how to open all of the doors at once. They're tossin' the cells!
Machine Gun Kelly looks simultaneously handsome and terrifying.
And here's the Birdman. Reading about him is chilling. He was a pure psychopath with an IQ of 134. Those are killer's eyes, and I am in no way joking; when asked what he'd do if released, he said that he still had a long list of people he needed to kill.
A solitary confinement cell. Also known as the location where each cast member of Oz eventually had to do his nude scene.
The inside of a solitary cell. No sink, no toilet and, once they closed the door, no light. This is where one of the ex-cons kept himself amused by throwing a button against the wall and finding it on his hands & knees in the dark, then doing it again hundreds of times.
Looking out across from a cell. They said that if the wind was blowing right, the cons could hear the sound of parties and merriment from San Francisco, especially on New Year's Eve.
R.I.P. Brooks
The view from the top of the stairway leading to the yard. It must have been maddening to be locked up with no hope of escape and such a wondrous view of freedom. As the ex-con says later in this photo diary, they thought about escape every day.
Here are the steps where Clint Eastwood's Frank Morris forged an alliance with English in 'Escape From Alcatraz' (which the ex-con later in the photo diary says was one of the few films to accurately portray life on The Rock). Decorum prevents me from quoting the exact conversation, but you can look it up on the IMDB's list of memorable quotes from the movie. You'll know which one it is.
Another view of the city. How long until the island is sold and converted into super-deluxe condos? I'm not even remotely kidding; Alcatraz might have the best view of the Bay anywhere. There's a video later that shows the full scope of the view. I would totally live there as long as it was voluntary.
In the biggest and most violent escape attempt, known as The Battle of Alcatraz, one of the cons fashioned a bar bender from a bolt & spare parts and bent the bars enough to wriggle through. This is one of the very few ways in which it pays to be a small guy in prison.
This is the cell in which the guards were held hostage during the Battle of Alcatraz ...
... and this is a memorial to one of the officers killed in cold blood during the standoff. Not only did he hide a key the convicts needed to escape, he also secretly wrote the names of the guilty inmates on the floor and circled the names of the ringleaders. All while bleeding to death. Now that is bravery. What a man.
When the Marines were called in to end the standoff, they dropped grenades through a hole in the roof. These are blast marks in the concrete.
I believe that's the hole through which they dropped the grenades.
One of the prisoners took up crochet as a way to pass the time, and even taught other prisoners how to do it. I cannot imagine a world in which this was considered butch.
Prisoners could earn the privilege to listen to one of two radio stations in their cells. If only Tool had been around in the 1950s, 'Prison Sex' would have been a huge hit on The Rock.
Yes, that is Warden Norton second from the right. I'm not kidding, that drawing looks exactly like him.
This is the visitation area. You sat at a small window and talked through the glass on monitored phones. It's too depressing to joke about.
And here are the visitation rules.
This is the still-operating lighthouse on the end of the island. There are a lot of jokes here that I'm just gonna cruise right on by.
The official uniforms of the guards. Other than the hats, I'd gladly wear one of those getups to a wedding.
What we have here is a failure to communicate.
The remains of the warden's house. I believe it was burned during the fascinating and completely bizarre occupation of the island by Native Americans in the early 70s.
I held up my camera and panned the entire skyline as seen from the end of the island. Like I said, I'm serious as the grave about those high-end condos. Both bridges in view, gulls flying, sailboats sailing ... it's pretty spectacular.
The control room in the guards' area. Just another day in the office for them.
I don't know if this is one of the actual fake heads or a replica, but either way it's creepy as hell. Note the hole in the cell in the background, along with the fake vent they fashioned. This is one of the actual cells from which they escaped.
A closeup of the escape hole. Imagine carving that with a spoon every night, listening for your lookout to let you know when a guard was coming. Anything to keep yourself occupied, I guess, and the payoff for this hobby is much better than a crocheted pink shawl.
This is the maintenance area in which Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers climbed up to the roof after getting through the holes they'd busted in the back of their cells.
A diagram showing how Morris & the Anglin brothers escaped.
Frank Morris and the Anglin brothers, along with pictures of the fake heads. The guy on the right looks mean as hell. Frank Morris is the one on the left. He does look as smart as they say he was, like he was planning his escape from the moment he arrived (he had escaped from other prisons previously).
Gas canisters in the kitchen. The most dangerous part of each day was when 200 cons were in the same room, so these were installed for emergencies. They were never used, though. Which is good for the guards stationed in the kitchen, as they would have been locked in with the cons and probably would have died one way or another.
A big ol' stew pot, I'm guessing. The one thing everyone agreed on was that Alcatraz actually apparently had really good food (they had T-bone steaks each year on the 4th of July). It makes sense; with everyone crammed in the same room, it was safer if people were enjoying the food instead of getting tense over spoiled grits.
Notice the knife rack on the left; the shape of each knife was outlined on the rack so the guards would always know that everything had been returned to its place after each meal.
Here's one of the last cons to leave the island addressing visitors. It was heartbreaking. When he says "that's how I lost these in a meat grinder" he's flashing his right hand, which is missing the bottom knuckles of all of the fingers. This part is him explaining how he got to the island.
He's taking questions from the crowd now. You can't hear the questions well, but his answers make them pretty clear. The boy on the left is asking "what was it like living on the island?" The answer: "Like being in hell, son."
