I flew back to San Francisco on Friday, where I would be departing from the following day for New York.

San Fran on a Friday night, New York the night after. A pretty rock n roll lifestyle, only without the drugs, much cash or physical energy after weeks of incessant travelling.

On Friday afternoon I went to see Alcatraz. And by that I don't mean the pop band Alcatraz, who had a hit in 2002 with the G-A-Y floor-filler 'Crying at the Discotheque'. Oh no. I was going to the famous former high security prison on Alcatraz Island, which is in the middle of San Fran's bay.

It was a very surreal place. I couldn't quite work out why, given that the prison shut in 1963, the whole place stunk so much of piss, but it was a thoroughly interesting afternoon. I've not been inside a prison before, unless you count the faux paus in Ipswich in 1998 that led to me sharing a police cell with a window cleaner. It was, erm, like a prison. I couldn't understand why the tour guides were trying to make out how horrible it was here, with things like cells and solitary confinement, as if none of this has ever existed in other prisons.

In reality, what makes Alcatraz such a chilling place is its location. San Francisco Bay is cold, windy and foggy on a July summer day. Fuck only knows what it's like being stuck on an prison island in the middle of it during winter. Only the most serious offenders ever found out - Alcatraz was where they sent people who were basically deemed beyond rehabilitation. Freezing half to death every day in a piss smelling cell, I think capital punishment would have been an act of mercy.

While we are on the subject of crime, I returned to the same hotel on Friday night that I had stayed in on my first trip to San Francisco a week ago. You may recall from an earlier post that it is very nice and centrally located. It is, however, also next to one of the dodgiest areas I have ever been to. On Friday afternoon on my way back to the hotel, a drunken and drugged looking homeless woman was kind enough to show me that she was carrying a kitchen knife in her coat pocket. I didn't think this was the sort of thing I should just ignore, and so I went to find some coppers I had seen patrolling a nearby street. While I walked to find them, I was verbally abused by probably about 15 people. Eventually I found an officer, and as I was informing him there was a deranged looking bird wandering around with a knife, a baseball bat cluttered against the back of my neck. Somebody had actually thrown it from the window of a nearby flat. Fortunately, it didn't hurt. I then went back to my hotel and vowed not to venture back to that area again. All of the above happened in the space of five minutes.

Later on in the evening I ventured out to a club night called 'Fag Fridays', which probably gives a hint to its orientation. During the course of the evening I had a bit of a snog with someone, and when we got to the normal 'what's your name and where are you from?' stuff, it transpired he was half English and would be visiting the country soon to see his mother's family. In Ipswich. For crying out loud, I was in a club in California and I had come across someone from Ips***. Fortunately, he wasn't into football!

I returned to my hotel at 4.30am, set my alarm and realised I would get four hours' sleep before heading to the airport. Fuck.