Alcatraz

After a pretty late night, Morty and I ferreted ourselves out of bed at 8:00am to get down to pier 35 to jump on a boat to Alcatraz Island. I was particularly excited by this. Watching Clint Eastwood bust out of this iconic jail when I was a kid is still one of my fondest memories. The story behind the island "the rock" and it's origins is an impressive one. San Francisco being such a massive port for trade and pirates pillaging cigarettes off dusty travelers "arrr", meant it was an important staging post during times of war. The cool thing about Alcatraz is that it made an awesome rear post in a triangular fortification point, protecting the bay area. The Golden Gate Bridge at either ends makes up the two forward posts of this triangular, there point defense. Forts were built in all three locations and on Alcatraz this later became a military prison, then the countries' most feared state penitentiary.


On the ferry over, we thought we would try one of America's cheese filled soft pretzel... it was shit.


Alcatraz with the view of the Golden Gate Bridge to it's east. The waters between were once considered potential battleground for the Navy.


San Francisco from the water.


Evidence of the early fort. This cannon was set up to fire at men, if they were to try to take the island. This was the only way accessible to the fort, from the dock.


Cool old building.


Looking down toward the dock, on the west side or rear of the triangular defense.


Water tower and the edge of the exercise yard to the left. See the guard tower?

Believe it or not, thus was the morgue.

The morgue, behind those green doors.


The old prison showers.


The prison exercise yard.


Looking in to solitary confinement.


From within solitary confinement. There's light from the camera flash only.


The prison library.


Describes one of the most famous spoiled breakout attempts.


Part II


Coy (prisoner) fashioned a bar spreader with some pipe, nut and bolt.


He starved himself before the attempt so he could fit through the spread of the bars.


One of the guards pocketed the key and wrote the names of the conspirators on the wall before being shot and killed by the inmates.


These are the pockmarks left from the grenades that were dropped through the ceiling by the army to foil the escape.


A standard cell in Alcatraz. Bed, sink, shitter, table and chair bolted to the wall and a couple of shelves. 10x6 feet.


The only escape where convicts were never found, saw the crooks make masks of themselves and tunnel through the grill at the back of the cell with a spoon. They then climbed through the wall space and out to freedom. Did they die in the cold, shark infested waters? We will never know.


The guards were never alerted through the night, cause it looked like they were sleeping.


But in the morning, when the men didn't wake up, the guard got a shock when he went to hit the con in the head and the head just rolled out of the bed.


Not bad for a prison without an arts department.


The grill was removed and they chipped away the stone wall with a spoon. A replacement grill was fashioned from papier-mâché along with the fake heads.


Just big enough to squeeze through. It took them a year to chip away the wall.


This is the wall space they crawled into from their cells.


Above to freedom.


The whole place was eery and rad.


After the island we went to IN-N-OUT burger.


Tasty and old school.

Location:2nd St,Santa Monica,United States