BC’s family visited last week, so we all went to Alcatraz, the former maximum-security prison located on a rocky wind-swept island in the middle of the San Francisco Bay. It was my umpteenth time to visit—the first time the weather wasn’t windy, cold and damp, but actually sunny and pleasantly mild. We watched the Clint Eastwood flick, Escape from Alcatraz, the night before, filmed on location on the island. The film is based on an actual escape in June 1962 by inmates Frank Morris and brothers Clarence and John Anglin. They made papier maché sculptures of their heads and placed them in their beds to fool the guards, while they scrambled to uncertain freedom through an unused utility corridor, down to the water, and across the frigid bay on a raft made of bound-together rain coats—to who knows where. They were never heard from again.
Shortly after the prison closed, Bay Area Native Americans lobbied to have the island developed into a Native American school and cultural center. After a few unsuccessful attempts to occupy the island, activists eventually succeeded in late 1969, representing Indians of all tribes, claiming that Alcatraz was theirs by right of discovery. They offered to buy the island from the federal government for $24 in glass beads and red cloth (the price paid to the Indians for Manhattan). The Nixon administration let things sort of work themselves out, and after the accidental death of organizer Richard Oakes’ stepdaughter, falling to her death from a prison stairwell, things deteriorated fairly rapidly, with the eventual arrival of armed federal marshals, who removed the few remaining holdouts. There is still graffiti on structures around the island from the time of the occupation.
My favorite part of the visit was the audio tour, which is a marvel of storytelling and sound effects. You’re guided through the main prison by several former inmates, who describe life in the prison during their time there, as well as the history of the island. The sounds animate the experience with a sense of being there with the inmates decades ago, bars clanking shut, guard whistles going off, voices grumbling, seagulls ka-ka-ka-ing…
