Thursday, September 1, 2011

Travelogue #3: Alcatraz

When I tell people I went on a tour of Alcatraz, “creepy”, “fascinating”, and “freezing” are the three most common adjectives I hear in responses. And of course, it was all of those things. 


There is something cruel about dangling a view of the San Francisco skyline in front of a group of inmates with no means of getting there. 


Yet at the same time, there is also something both awful and beautiful about deserted buildings, rusting metal and a place so rationally dedicated to a singular end - incarceration. 


It was a rare and marvellous experience to visit a place full of memories but with no future, doomed to perform and re-perform its past again and again, all in the name of tourism. 
















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