Nearly finished here, so today myself and Rod headed down to Pier 39 for our obligatory trip to Alcatraz, ex-Federal-Penitentiary. The touristy souvenir shops that had previously enthralled me this time offered little of interest (they haven't changed, I would appear to have), so after wandering them for a while we collected our tickets (Rod had bought them online a few days ago, and just as well because as we were queueing the PA system announced that the next available tickets were for Saturday evening) and awaited the Blue & Gold Line ferry across the one-and-a-quarter miles of Bay to the island. The ferry ride was swift and pleasant (for somebody who likes travel by boat, at least, which I do and regret there isn't more chance to do it).
First thing we did was head up to the main cellblock building for the audio tour. I'd done this once before, about ten years ago, and thought it was good enough that when I was in China last year and found there was an audio tour for the Forbidden City in Beijing I decided to go on that - what sealed the deal was that the narrator was none other than ROGER FUCKING MOORE! As Jesse Ventura would say, "and that made Jesse Ventura pretty damn happy.". So anyway, the audio tour this time around was good as well - fortunately it's not just a crappy version of a proper tour with a tourguide, but it was done by former wardens (who told the occassional story involving Tommy-guns) and former inmates (who have the coolest Prohibition-era-style accents ever) and had some sound effects like clanging doors and what-not. It's an electronic thingie that isn't a cassette player but could be, with headphones, and it says things like "now walk along Broadway until you reach Cell 142. This was the cell of Johnny McPrisoner, who served time here from 1942 until 1957". It's proclaimed several places to be an Award-Winning audio tour, although I don't know who gave the awards or for what, but it was good fun nevertheless.
After that we wandered the island a bit, which allowed us to see stuff like the lighthouse and exercise ground. There was a museum that I spent ages in reading just about everything they had written down (I've devoted some amount of time in the past few weeks to thinking about the nature and aims of the prison system, so it was interesting), and a video about the history of Alcatraz, and some more videos about when it was taken over by Indian-rights protesters in the early 1970s, and some lame gift shops (only eleven bucks for an Alcatraz Spoon!), and eventually we took the ferry back to the mainland.
Although I've been rabbiting on about the views from various bits of the Bay Area, and the beauty of the place, I have to say that Alcatraz takes the biscuit. It's right in the middle of the Bay, so you have a good view of San Francisco, Oakland, the Bay Bridge, the Golden Gate bridge, the works, and it's right over there, the most beautiful city in the world, I could totally swim that if only I could get out of my cell and evade the guards, and then I'd be free... Regardless of the strict regieme, the extremely limited rights the prisoners enjoyed and the suckiness of being in prison at all, the absolute worst thing about doing time in Alcatraz has to have been the view of everything you're missing, right over there.
Back on Pier 39, I eventually caved and bought a fake Confederate officers' hat, because the hat I currently have is black and is going to act like a cranial solar panel in Australia, and because I like Old West stuff and the South Will Rise Again and all that. I have my doubts as to its accuracy - it's made of leather, and has a yellow cord around it, which denotes it as a cavalry officer's hat, whereas I personally (and perhaps inaccurately) would associate the crossed rifles on the front (rather than crossed sabres) with an infantryman's hat. But it's still cool, and fits well, and is light grey which repels the sun, because that's science.
After forging our way through rush-hour traffic (that sure took a while) we got back to this place, with some vegetables and steaks and pie for dinner. I have never seen steaks that cost fifty dollars for three before, but goddamn they were pretty good. Also good was sitting out on the veranda before dinner sipping a martini, eating "potato chips", watching the sun setting over the Bay and writing an email. It'd have made a nice photo, because a photo wouldn't have shown how freakin' freezing I was. Fortunately even as I type my human brain is hard at work encoding the above scene in my long-term memory, conveniently leaving out bits like the temperature.