A very nice and thorough and
interesting post over at Chris
Cloud’s Cloudtravel about his visit to
Alcatraz in SF Bay. Sadly, when I think of the island, what comes to mind
are two films, one horrible, one
decent. The Rock with Nick Cage was absurd and dumb, the scene at the end where he plays with the ridiculously colorful
balls of toxic/nuclear/whatever poison was one of the lamest scenes in recent memory. But Escape from Alcatraz with
Clint Eastwood was pretty fine.
Anyway, Cloud provides some cool photos and
writes up a fairly detailed little history of the place that is worth a read. I learned some thing about the island
that I didn’t know. For example, were you aware that the installation was shut down by Attorney General Robert Kennedy,
who had it closed because it cost the government more per prisoner to keep him there than over night at the
Waldorf-Astoria in New York? Now that’s news you can use…with friends in a bar, anyway.