Abandon hope/despair, all ye who enter here!

This was our day to explore San Francisco.  Not very long to experience a great city, but this is the hand we were dealt.  We got up bright and early (well, not so bright for morning allergic Anthony) and got our Muni-passes and off we went on our cable car ride to Pier 33 to catch the boat to Alcatraz.  We were lucky that Mike's friends advised us to book our trip well in advance because right now, you can't get tickets until mid-August.  The cable car ride was great fun and the operator was very lively and explained how the cable car worked and we saw lots of those cool San Francisco special houses and some fancy hotels, where we'll stay next time we come (maybe in another lifetime)!  We got to Pier 33 just in time and boarded the boat to the island.

"Alcatraz" means "seabird" and there are so many western gulls on the island that their calls almost drown out any conversations you might try to have.  There are lots of gull chicks, too, and they are very pushy with their parents and funny to watch as they try to get airborne.  There are lots of cormorants, too, and they're nesting and fledging, too, and it is amazing to see the awkward youths flapping their wings and looking off over the cliffs and thinking about taking the plunge, but not feeling quite ready yet.

Alcatraz was originally a fortified island which the USA bought from Mexico and then developed as a fortress against a possible Confederate attack, which, of course, never occured.  It was actually built by military prisoners who were then housed in the cells they'd constructed. 

Most people are interested in Alcatraz as a high security prison and that was the main focus of the audio tour we took.  It is narrated by actual inmates and guards who were at the prison over the course of its tenure as a jail.  The background sound was quite chilling because it recreated the atmosphere of the stories told by the narrators.  I wish I could post pictures because words cannot describe what the cells looked like and what the place felt like.  Especially chilling were the isolation cells.  There is a regulation that the lights should always be on in these cells, but they did not follow the regulation and the cells were left in darkness.  One narrator told how he would pull off a button from his prison garb and throw it on the floor and then spend the time searching for it to keep himself from going crazy.  One of the inmates I was interested in was Robert Stroud, the Birdman of Alcatraz, who was not actually allowed to keep birds in Alcatraz.  His studies of birds took place in Leavenworth Penitentiary.  The guard who described him said he was highly intelligent but otherwise, a vicious manipulative psychopath.  I loved Burt Lancaster's performance in the movie "The Birdman of Alcatraz" and of course, he didn't play him that way at all.  Both versions could be true, I think.  I hadn't thought I would be that interested in Alcatraz, but it was fascinating and the rest of the family agreed.  I'm really glad we were able to see it.

We sailed back to San Francisco and had a great seafood lunch at Fisherman's Wharf and we watched the buskers and looked at Alcatraz across the bay.   William said it was great to be in a place where so much was happening and it's true.  There was this great band on the corner with a man playing the piano and a woman on the saxophone and a guy on the drums and it was like a great concert there on the street.  We lined up for a long time for our cable car back to the downtown, but while we waited there was a guy named "Socks" doing comic patter and songs to keep our spirits up.  The cable car was jammed with people and Anthony and I lost contact with Mike and William but managed to hop off and make the dream trip to City Lights Books where all the beat poets used to hang out and where Lawrence Ferlinghetti published Alan Ginsberg's "Howl" and got into trouble with the censors.  It is one ot the classic bookstores and it was great to browse and pick out a few obscure books that I wouldn't be able to find anywhere else.  We hopped on another cable car and arrived back at the hotel and are now recuperating from the busy day and watching the fog roll in over the city.

Our plan is to go to Golden Gate Park later (in the fog?), and then tomorrow off we go to Los Angeles and Disneyland!