VISITORS QUICKLY GO STIR CRAZY AT ALCATRAZ.

Byline: Story by Eric Noland Travel Editor

SAN FRANCISCO - A fascinating study in human nature plays out several times a day at the north end of San Francisco.

Tourists line up early, press forward and clamber aboard ferry boats bound for Alcatraz Island. They just can't wait to get to a place that hardened criminals once did everything in their nefarious power to avoid.

After about an hour on the Rock, however, you see these same people walking toward the island's rickety dock at a quickened pace, and queuing up with a palpable sense of unease.

Alcatraz tends to have that effect on people: It wields an undeniably strong tug, with subsequent powers of repulsion that are probably even greater.

Maybe it's the glimpse of an inmate's cell - a cubicle 9 feet long by 5 feet wide, painted sickly yellow, with barely enough room for a single cot, a sink and a toilet. Maybe it's a moment or two spent in ``the hole,'' isolation cells in which all light is squeezed out by a heavy steel door. Or maybe it is tale after tale of foiled escape, prisoners sopping wet in the 50-degree waters of the bay, shivering among the windblown rocks as searchlights inevitably hunt them down.

For most visitors, a single sentiment probably plays like a continuous loop in the brain: I never want to do anything that might land me in a place like this.

Alcatraz is one of the most popular tourist attractions in San Francisco, attracting more than 1 million visitors per year - and understandably. So much mystique enveloped this place during its time as a repository for the worst of society's worst between 1934 and 1963. Locked behind its bars were Al Capone, Machine Gun Kelly, Creepy Karpis and the Birdman of Alcatraz, Robert Stroud (who, as it turns out, never kept birds here).

It was shut down as a maximum-security prison 40 years ago this year, largely because of the extreme expense of transporting goods and people to the island.

Today, after four decades of deferred maintenance, the ravages of wind and salt air, plus destructive fires that occurred during an American Indian occupation in the late 1960s, the place has a dilapidated, decaying aspect, which only makes it appear more ominous as the ferry boats pull up to its dock.

Alcatraz is administered by the National Park Service and served by the Blue & Gold Fleet, which makes the short run out to the island several times a day from Pier 41 at Fisherman's Wharf.

Rangers patrol the grounds to provide information, and audio tours are available with commentary delivered by former inmates and guards. A 14-minute video and a self-guided tour brochure ($1) also fill in details of the prison's legacy.

Alcatraz, considered escape-proof because it stood in the middle of forbidding San Francisco Bay, was conceived to house federal prisoners who were thought to be ``violent, escape-prone or incorrigible.''

As you peer into one of those tiny cells, you might get chills when you learn that inmates customarily spent 16 to 23 hours per day in there. In the isolation cells, an unfortunate soul might spend days on end. In the video, a former inmate tells of endless time passed in ``the hole'' - he would toss a button into the air in the utter darkness, then systematically search every square inch of the cell until he found it. Any little exercise to keep from going batty.

Alcatraz is steeped in myth, too, and the park service brochures take great pains to clear up the whoppers. Specifically: No one was ever executed on Alcatraz. The Birdman kept canaries when he was at Leavenworth but wasn't permitted to have birds here. The prisoners were actually fed pretty well here. And the guys who attempted to escape weren't in danger of being eaten by sharks, since man-eaters tend not to enter the bay from the Pacific.

Ah, escape. It's probably the one subject that sparks the greatest number of questions for the rangers.

There were 14 attempts during Alcatraz's 29 years as a penitentiary. You might hear that none was successful, but a more accurate answer is that none was believed to be successful.

In 1937, two inmates cut through a window bar in a work building and disappeared. In 1962, three resourceful fellows left replica heads on their pillows and wriggled through air vents to the roof; they slipped into the water with homemade flotation devices and were never seen again.

Did any of these guys make it to safety? It's anyone's guess, but ranger Jayeson Vance is skeptical. To strengthen his argument, he cites the case of John Paul Scott.

In December 1962 - exactly one year before the prison closed - Scott and another inmate cut through bars in a kitchen basement and were soon plunging into the bay. Although the second prisoner quickly turned back and was captured, Scott made it across - the only known successful swim by an inmate.

But success is a relative term here. ``He was practically in a coma when he got out of the water, his core temperature was so low,'' Vance said. ``He'd had two heart attacks.'' Also, the current had carried Scott clear to Fort Point, at the south abutment of the Golden Gate Bridge. That was a military reservation then, and a patrol had him in custody before he could dry off.

An hour spent walking around Alcatraz will probably impress the visitor with the prisoners' strong will to get out of here - especially if any time is spent in the 1912 Cellhouse at the top of the hill.

And if that doesn't do it, seek out an exhibit in the Barracks displaying the remorseful words of George ``Machine Gun'' Kelly, who spent 17 years on the Rock for kidnapping. ``Nothing can be worth this,'' he wrote. ``No one knows what it is to suffer from the intellectual apathy, the pernicious mental scurvy of a life of captivity.''

Is that boat about ready to go back now?

IF YOU GO

The Alcatraz ferries depart several times daily from Pier 41 at Fisherman's Wharf. Cost is $11.50 for adults, $9.75 for seniors age 62 and up, $8.25 for children age 5 to 11. It's a good idea to book this several days in advance, especially if you're visiting on a weekend. Information and reservations: [phone]; www.blueandgoldfleet.com. National Park Service's Alcatraz Web site: www.nps.gov/alcatraz.

CAPTION(S):

2 photos, box

Photo:

(1 -- color) Between 1934 and 1963, this was the dismal view of hardened criminals riding ferry boats to their new prison home: Alcatraz Island.

(2) At Alcatraz Island, inmates' cells were 9 feet by 5 feet.

Eric Noland/Travel Editor

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IF YOU GO (see text)