{"id":7942,"date":"2026-08-28T07:58:43","date_gmt":"2026-08-28T12:58:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/?p=7942"},"modified":"2026-08-28T07:58:44","modified_gmt":"2026-08-28T12:58:44","slug":"a-chilly-august-visit-to-alcatraz-island-s-f","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/a-chilly-august-visit-to-alcatraz-island-s-f\/","title":{"rendered":"A Chilly August Visit To Alcatraz Island, S.F."},"content":{"rendered":"

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\"\"<\/a>ALCATRAZ ISLAND, SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 That is a dateline I have long yearned to write, to satisfy my lifelong fascination with this desolate island in the San Francisco Bay, a little more than a mile offshore. As a kid, I devoured books and movies about Alcatraz, a rocky island developed in the mid-19th<\/sup> century as a fort, then a military prison, and finally a federal prison for the worst of the worst \u2014 Al Capone, aka Scarface; Bumpy Johnson (played brilliantly by Longview native Forest Whitaker in the recent series Godfather of Harlem<\/em>); George \u201cMachine Gun\u201d Kelly; and Alvin \u201cCreepy\u201d Karpis, who served the longest time of any inmate at Alcatraz.<\/p>\n

The \u201cBirdman of Alcatraz,\u201d Robert Stroud, was immortalized in an eponymous 1962 film starring Burt Lancaster, Karl Malden, and Thelma Ritter \u2014 one year before then-Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy (the sane<\/em> RFK) shut it down, citing the exorbitant cost of operating a federal prison a mile-plus offshore. Running Alcatraz was three times more expensive than other federal prisons because everything \u2014 including one million gallons of fresh water \u2014 had to be brought\"\"<\/a> in by barge each week.<\/p>\n

Alcatraz, consisting of 22 acres, is now part of the U.S. National Park Service and is visited by nearly 1.4 million people each year, including us on a foggy, misty, chilly August morning. (Being able to use those three adjectives to describe a day in August is the main reason we are visiting San Francisco \u2014 to escape the brutal Texas heat, albeit briefly.)<\/p>\n

I had a not-unusual semi-obsession with gangsters as a lad, devouring books about Capone, Bonnie and Clyde, and other ne\u2019er-do-wells. I avidly watched Birdman of Alcatraz<\/em>, not realizing until years later that it bore a faint resemblance to the real-life bird lover Robert Stroud. He actually raised canaries while in Leavenworth Prison in Kansas, but wasn\u2019t allowed to do so on The Rock, as it was called. Stroud was convicted of manslaughter, later fatally stabbed a guard, and used his bird research equipment to manufacture bootleg liquor. His misdeeds behind bars led to his transfer to Alcatraz.\u00a0The Birdman died in a prison hospital after spending the last 17 years of his life there.<\/p>\n

In late 1969, more than six years after the prison closed, the island was occupied for more than 19 months by about 90 Native Americans calling themselves Indians of All Tribes. They cited the 1868 Treaty of Fort Laramie, arguing that unused federal land, such as Alcatraz, should be returned to its original occupants. They wanted the abandoned prison to be turned into a cultural center and a Native American university. Eventually, armed federal agents forcibly removed the remaining activists. Their handiwork remains \u2014 spray-painted messages on the entry sign and water tower, and a few walls.<\/p>\n

More than 60 years after it closed, Alcatraz remains forbidding and creepy. One cellhouse has been restored to give visitors a sense of how grim life here was, including 9- by-5-foot cells smaller than my bedroom closet. Other buildings are reduced to shells, often roofless. A well-kept flower garden is an incongruous feature of the park, enjoyed by the many birds that call the island home \u2014 as well as by visitors and park workers. The entire island is a juxtaposition of its rugged beauty, the bevy of birds, and concrete ruins \u2014 all suffused with the memories of the criminals who served their time here \u2014 men considered beyond redemption.<\/p>\n

President Orange Skin wants $152 million to turn Alcatraz back into a federal prison. As usual, POS is both math-challenged and unconcerned about pissing away taxpayer money (to wit: the reflecting pool.) That is a double-edged sword. The costs of maintaining a prison at Alcatraz have only escalated since it was shut down six decades ago for being too expensive. As the New York Times<\/em> pointed out<\/a>, Alcatraz has no running water or sewage system. Most of the island is covered in bird poop. And all supplies would have to be transported by boat. San Franciscans appear almost unanimously opposed to losing one of their top tourist destinations, which grosses about $60 million annually.<\/p>\n

Plus, the $152 million proposed is just a starting point, a familiar tactic of this administration. The full cost of restoring, reopening, and maintaining Alcatraz would make the money being wasted on the ballroom look like chump change. Luckily, the chances of that actually happening are slim to none. Put it up there with making Canada the 51st<\/sup> state, another POS delusion.<\/p>\n

The waters around Alcatraz are famously cold and rough. From the mainland, looking toward the island, I thought, \u201cWell, swimming that looks doable. Not by me, but by a decent athlete.\u201d Once on The Rock, it was clear how daunting escaping from Alcatraz would have been, with strong currents and waves crashing against the rocks. Officially, nobody successfully escaped from Alcatraz, though three inmates in 1962 managed to dig through their cell walls, leaving paper m\u00e2ch\u00e9 dummies in their beds to fool the guards for a while. The trio was never seen again.<\/p>\n

Romantics like to think they succeeded, since no bodies were ever found.\u00a0Nah. They drowned.<\/p>\n

Visiting Alcatraz is fascinating, though likely a one-and-done event for us; we definitely plan to return to San Francisco. The Rock is not the most uplifting tourist site. When I looked at the cells, saw the mugshots of its most famous inmates hanging in the restored cellblock, and read about their crimes, I felt a prevailing sadness. Such a waste of lives.<\/p>\n

It is like Bruce Springsteen wrote in Nebraska<\/em>, about killers Charles Starkweather and Caril Ann Fugate: I guess there\u2019s just a meanness in this world<\/em>.<\/p>\n

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Print this entryALCATRAZ ISLAND, SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 That is a dateline I have long yearned to write, to satisfy my lifelong fascination with this desolate island in the San Francisco […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[85,38],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7942","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-85","category-columns"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7942","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7942"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7942\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7946,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7942\/revisions\/7946"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7942"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7942"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/garyborders.com\/pages\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7942"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}