From Isolation to International Hub: Alcatraz’s Remarkable Transformation
By Alcatraz Tour Guide, Brian Stannard
In 1972, Alcatraz splashed water on its face and ran a comb through its hair like a hungover person hastily preparing for a job interview. But it wasn’t just a one-off scramble; Alcatraz went to rehab.
Alcatraz, the former prison, became Alcatraz the park. Currently, more than 5,000 visitors disembark onto the Alcatraz Dock in just one summer’s day, a number which far surpasses the 1,576 number of convicts processed during Alcatraz’s twenty-nine-year run as a federal prison. I often joke that Alcatraz, the park, is more lucrative than it was as a prison.
I once spoke to an Alcatraz visitor from Scotland who said she had rushed directly to Alcatraz from SFO. Her flights were delayed, and due to the sold-out summer season, she couldn’t switch her timed Alcatraz ticket she had purchased in advance. But she made it!
Alcatraz and the Alcatraz staff became her inaugural, in-person engagement with the United States. She was mesmerized, and she voiced a sentiment that I hear a double-digit number of times during an Alcatraz shift: I didn’t realize there was so much to this place.
I call it the Alcatraz Bait and Switch: people come to Alcatraz expecting no more than a glimpse of Al Capone’s cell, but they unexpectedly learn about a whole slew of other topics ranging from civil rights issues impacting Native Americans to the migratory patterns of seabirds.
In addition to providing an environment that maximizes curiosity, Alcatraz’s primary currency is people. Studies show that sustained social isolation is the equivalent of smoking cigarettes in terms of its negative impact on a person’s health. In one of the more ironic turnarounds, Alcatraz, the former prison with its lines of cells dedicated to solitary confinement, is now an international destination with a boisterous atmosphere of face-to-face engagement with citizens from all over the world.
The movable feast of Alcatraz is orchestrated by an eclectic staff of musicians, writers, immigrants, and the formerly addicted and incarcerated, with a huge age range represented in our employee ranks.
At Alcatraz, we all get to be our own versions of Anthony Bourdain, but the world comes to us. I describe my job as being a bartender at the United Nations. We might not be ironing out peace accords, but there’s still a lot of laughter and learning while I practice mangled Spanish with visitors from Santiago or receive a history lesson on the Port Arthur Prison in Tasmania from a group of Australians.
The Alcatraz staff are diplomats. Knowing that we might be the primary representatives of the United States for our international visitors carries an overwhelming sense of responsibility, but it’s also an expansive opportunity. We are the living embodiment of the Sly and the Family Stone song “Everyday People,” and if we can create just a sliver of the endorphin rush and electricity that that song generates, then hey, our work here is done!
For myself, Alcatraz is more than a job; it’s a type of therapy. Even after working here for six years, I’m still uncovering Choose Your Own Adventure storylines to explore. Prior to arriving at Alcatraz, I completed my own experience at a drug and alcohol rehab (for the third time), and today I marvel at the irony that a former prison, Alcatraz, offers so much open-ended opportunity to facilitate curiosity. It is a furnace, providing warmth and comfort despite the Pacific winds.
Active addiction is a tedious grind and a type of slow-motion suicide. Established sobriety is also a slow-motion process, but a process of curiosity blooming and its own version of mind expansion, albeit deeper and more sustained than a chemical blast.
Within the depths of active addiction there are melodramatic events such as car crashes, fist fights, and nights in jail, but equally oppressive are the things that don’t happen: creative projects don’t launch, friendships get neglected, and one’s own personal boat goes in circles rather than making an even keel to the horizon.
For myself, engaging with things that promote curiosity is a key to sustained growth.
This well of curiosity gets replenished daily at Alcatraz. It’s easy to feel a childlike wonder about the world when there are actual children nearby, laughing at the funny sounds snowy egrets make while nesting along Alcatraz’s West Road.
Alcatraz provided an onslaught of metaphors to ruminate over when I was fresh out of rehab and new to working on the island. Military prisoners constructed their own brand-new prison building, the current cellhouse, in the early 1900s, a symbol that wasn’t lost on me. Similarly, I imagined how convicts felt while trapped behind walls in the Alcatraz dining hall while watching bridges being built in the San Francisco Bay in the mid-1930s.
An Alcatraz story that immediately reeled me in was that of Roy Gardner and his wife, Dollie. Roy, one of the first Alcatraz convicts of its federal penitentiary era, attempted to salvage his marriage with Dollie, a resident of the Bay Area, by requesting a transfer from Leavenworth to Alcatraz. The marriage didn’t survive incarceration and in time, Roy would call the island; Hellcatraz, the title of his autobiography.
There is an expression that says that every love story is a ghost story, and with that expression in mind, I do believe Alcatraz is haunted, as evident by the story of Roy and Dollie Gardner, which cut me to the bone upon learning of it.
After prison, Roy moved to San Francisco’s Tenderloin, an area I worked in for years prior to Alcatraz. The notorious aspects of the neighborhood pulled me under despite my best efforts to gird my mind with oceans of alcohol. It nearly did me in before I sobered up. Roy wasn’t so lucky and, in time, committed suicide on a block of Turk St. that was part of my work turf.
Alcatraz park ranger, Tom Ryan, presented the blueprint of the story of Roy and Dollie Gardner to me as a type of gateway drug and I had to know more as a salve to embolden my own newfound sobriety and curiosity. Hundreds of handwritten notes later came the book Alcatraz Ghost Story, which I consider a gift from Alcatraz.
May was Mental Health Awareness Month. Despair and depression carry the paradox where on some mornings, the weight of the world is too damn much whereas other days there’s not enough emotional oxygen. Either the weight or the absence distorts into an abstract mirage that is difficult to define. Too much noise. Too much silence.
Mental health struggles are a cruel and unusual punishment inflicted by the universe. It radiates to family, friends, and co-workers. In Jewish folklore, there is a concept of a dybbuk, a type of malevolent spirit that wanders the earth and torments people. To me, that sounds like a spot-on description of a mental health crisis.
I don’t want to be so bold as to claim I have any of this figured out, but I know for myself that the immersion in an environment that puts curiosity on steroids, combined with constructive in-person socialization, is the best antidote to my own mental health struggles. Time on Alcatraz in the context of the 21st Century is a slingshot toward self-care.
But the dybbuk is slippery, elusive, and ever tormenting as exemplified by the previously mentioned Anthony Bourdain, a man who seemingly had an enviable life but committed suicide. At times, the best we can do is bear witness with an open heart and be nice to each other.
Just as Gay Pride and Black History should be year-round celebrations rather than one-month blocks, mental health needs a sustained discussion to remove stigmas that many people feel while shouldering their burdens. Getting help should be rehumanizing rather than dehumanizing. We’re all just walking each other home, as the saying goes.
An evolved person is one who engages in self-reflection, navigates through the world with sustained self-awareness, and strives for improved change. We’re all flawed to some degree, but it’s how we manage these flaws that dot the ‘i’s and cross the ‘t’s.
Alcatraz as a phenomenon has undergone its own self-reflection, made a commitment to change, and has now become a place of learning, just like the former addict who still carries the scars but now has a sparkle in their eye.
Alcatraz in 2025, a former prison turned park, is in my opinion, an incredible metaphor for the capacity to evolve and lean toward a better future where the horror show collides with the beauty to create a bewildering kaleidoscope that is ever fascinating and unexpectedly healing.
Alcatraz is filled with so many ironies, and I think one of the biggest ironies would be an Alcatraz convict of the 1930s reading the essay about Alcatraz I just wrote.
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Buy Alcatraz tickets before the height of the summer season! Reservations here.
Alcatraz Ghost Story by Brian Stannard is available in the Alcatraz Museum Store and both Green Apple Books locations in San Francisco.
Howdy! My name is Katy Atchison and I'm an Associate Editor for Broke-Ass Stuart.
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