Alcatraz here I come. The well-trodden tourist path up the cliff to America's most notorious jail is familiar territory to many a visitor to San Francisco, but from the moment I am picked up by chauffeured 4WD with pink champagne at hand, it is clear my ferry trip to The Rock will be no ordinary excursion.
My companions include beauty editors and makeup artists from across the globe, all of us in town for a launch by Benefit cosmetics. We are soon decanted from the about 2km chartered ride across treacherous currents, perfectly timed to watch the sun set over the Golden Gate Bridge. Anyone teetering ashore is offered ballet slip-ons for the ascent. Thanking my gold flats, I take off in the first group of guests led by one of a team of US National Parks Service staff in attendance on our outing. Those wearing designer heels stay behind to have them stowed in individually named paper bags which are returned to them at our coatcheck for the cocktail evening - just outside the main jail concourse.
Movie-star handsome Ranger Gary gives a little spiel about the prison's history before handing over to Ranger Lou who says she's virtually a lifer. After 26 years guiding at Alcatraz this weathered veteran knows her stuff. She even seeks to settle any unease we may feel at partying in a prison by explaining that it wasn't all awful on at the Rock. Soldiers and guards who served there over its time as a fort and a jail, lived in barracks opening to cottage gardens sheltered below the forbidding main building. Inmates enjoyed the best food in the prison service, but, of course, escape was always their ambition, usually with deadly consequences.
As to those few who might have gotten away, she left it to our imagination, but my money is on the sharks.
