Bombay Beach Run, Feb. 13, 2012

It's not the Bombay Beach Run anymore since we're long past that rundown place on the Salton Sea. But what other name is there to call it? I don't know.

Today for us it was a day of trains and prisons. We caught a Caltrain which took over the tracks from the Southern Pacific Railroad. The train we were riding on was the milk run with stops at every station. But it was interesting. Some of the stations are pretty much original train station buildings, and are now used by Caltrain. It was fun to see them and quite relaxing to watch the towns go by as we sat there enjoying the ride without any hassle or frenzy of trying to fight traffic or find a parking space. There's also a ton of graffiti on the fences, walls and pretty much every available white or other color space. Some of it is actually quite artistic, but as Jaz said, it's still defacing someone's property.

We got to San Francisco and then caught a muni train, and from there an F line that uses antique trolley cars from all over the world. They are restored and put into service. The one we rode going to Pier 33, where we caught the ferry to Alcatraz, was originally from Italy. The one for the return trip was from Baltimore.

Going into the city was quite the adventure and we saw some of the seamier sides of things. People talking to themselves, laying in blankets on the street, and urine in an elevator that had a sign saying that urinating and defecating in the elevator was a punishable offense. Apparently the sign was in the wrong place or the person could not read.

We had had some real issues trying to get the tickets for the tour. The only way to book it was online, it wouldn't tell you when your tour was, and you had to print the ticket. So we had to go the library to print since we had no Internet access. Then when we got to the ferry station, we were late for our tour and thinking we'd have to do battle to get our space on the boat to get out to the Rock. When we got there, we had to turn in our little piece of paper, that was not a ticket, and exchange it for real tickets. But there was no hassle for not being on the correct tour. So we got to get on the ferry and head across the bay to Alcatraz Island and the infamous prison.

One of the ferries that transports visitors to the Rock.

The rock as seen from our approaching ferry.

Originally the island was a military fort, with construction starting in 1853. There were cannon, and a fortified gateway called a sally port, protecting the road to the brick citadel that sat on the island's highest point.

The sally port.  Love the name.

There were more than 400 soldiers stationed on the island, and all kinds of cannon, including the latest one of the times, a 25-ton, Rodman cannon that shot 15-inch, 440-pound cannonballs as far as three miles. They were installed in 1864.

One of the cannon that is near the entrance to Alcatraz.

As the military fort became obsolete, the Army formally decommissioned Alcatraz in 1907. But there was one interesting fact. From nearly the beginning it was also a prison of sorts. It held soldiers convicted of desertion, theft, assault, treason and every other type of crime. It also was a place of incarceration for the Hopi, Apache and Modoc Indians captured during the various Indian wars, and for military convicts during the Spanish-American war of 1898.

The map when it was a military fort.

In 1915 Alcatraz was renamed United States Disciplinary Barracks, Pacific Branch. Then in the 1930s the newly-created Bureau of Prisons became interested in the island as a high-profile, maximum-security facility. In 1934 it reopened as a federal penitentiary, operating until its closure March 21, 1963. There were 1,545 men who did time on Alcatraz, although it was never filled to capacity. The average number of inmates was 260, and there were 14 attempted escapes by 36 inmates. There was no gas chamber, and no executions. It's all fascinating information acquired before we ever got inside.

One of the first things you see when you land is a sign that says “United States Penitentiary, Alcatraz Island” and some other rules. There is also a later handwritten or painted sign added from when the Indians occupied the island saying “Indians welcome.”

The sign at the ferry dock as you land on Alcatraz.

The beginning of the tour takes you past a guard tower and up a walkway that is the very way the prisoners walked once they arrived and were herded up to the prison proper to be processed.

The guard tower at the landing.

Imagine walking up this and around a couple of switchbacks as you went toward the prison to be
tossed into a 7x9-foot cell for however many years of your sentence.

There are also flowers and plants everywhere, some of which were kept by the corrections officers and their families who lived on the island, and some of which were planted and cared for by the inmates. A lovely setting for a dismal existence.

There are some beautiful flowers on the island.

And this is in the winter months.

We walked past the electric repair shop, buildings that housed military workshops, a gym, chapel, a shooting range, a building with barracks and apartments for the workers and the warden's house which was a pretty impressive place although it burned in 1970.

Officer's club, which hosted a military post exchange and then a penitentiary social hall.

We also walked past a morgue that was used originally as a tunnel for military personnel to get to the other side of the island. Later it was turned into a morgue, but was never used for that purpose by the penitentiary.

The morgue.

I'm going in.

Then we entered the main prison. We got the audio tour that was so much more than I'd thought it would be.
The tour was narrated by both former corrections officers and inmates and took us through doors that clanked closed, the sounds of fights and riots where people were killed, and the unsettling sound of a knife pounding and slapping into a body.

The shower room.

Soap and soap dish in the shower room.

There were three tiers of cells.

Look at the bars on those windows.  Not so easy to get through those.

Heat register, rusted and dilapidated.

We were guided through the various cellblocks, there are four, and given facts about how prisoners lived, how they received visitors, what the “hole” was, where they were isolated. The tour was extensive as it even took us through some of the big escape attempts, including one in 1962 where three inmates used spoons to dig tunnels and fled through utility ducts. They made it to the water, but were never found.

The book of regulations issued to the inmates.

The regulation book specified how the inmates could hang towels.

Cell with all the amenities, except the mattress.

The dining room was an interesting room as it represented the most dangerous time of day for the corrections officers as all the inmates were there for meals three times a day. The food was good and plentiful and the kitchen as we saw it looked as though it was kept spotless.

The dining room.  All the inmates would be here at one time three times a day.  Utinsels were counted to reveal if any were missing.  Even something as simple as a spoon could be used to dig to escape or fashioned into a weapon.

The knives had outlines on the backboard so that the corrections folks could see in an instant if one was missing.

Spoons were a pretty important piece of cutlery.

Building the original prison was most likely a logistical nightmare as all the materials and equipment had to be barged in. The labor was done mostly by unskilled inmates, some of which ended up housed in the very prison they had helped to build. But it was a modern facility at that time with central steam heat, skylights and electric lighting. It was renovated when reopened as a maximum-security lock-up. The soft-steel barriers were replaced with tool-proof bars and gun galleries were built at either end of the two main cell blocks, B and C. Six guard towers were constructed, barbed wire strung, chainlink fences and metal detectors were installed.

I'd really rather not experience a jail cell for real.

Standing in a seven-foot by nine-foot cell, or looking out through bars or small windows toward the ocean and the city of San Francisco, makes you wonder how the inmates did not go crazy. They could see and smell the outside, they could hear sounds from the mainland, but they could not get to it, they could not participate in it, they were really not alive. They were only marking time.

Can you imagine seeing this from the Rock, knowing you can't experience it?  What agony for the inmates.

I stood in the recreation yard. All around me were concrete walls with fencing and barbed wire. Three of them. The fourth piece of the square was the prison building itself. It felt lonely, and sad. There'd been so much misery here, mostly deserved by the people suffering from it. Yet I find myself fascinated by prisons and what's inside them. Not enough to try to get in for a stay myself, of course. I guess most of us don't experience this type of thing first-hand, but often wonder what goes on, how does it work, what do people experience or live like in a prison? I know way more now than I did before, but still want to know more.

The yard as I saw it.  Eerie with no one else around.

And then we were on the road headed back down to the ferry to go back to the mainland, to catch the transits back to Redwood City. Civilization and dinner with Jaz's mom. What a superb day.