Can you successfully smuggle alcohol into Alcotraz? Try for yourself https://t.co/u2WxnDYROG pic.twitter.com/ymksptoX4v
— Alcotraz London (@AlcotrazLondon) August 24, 2017
Alcotraz, a speakeasy pop-up bar themed after San Francisco's historic Alcatraz prison, just opened in London, and from the sound of it, they really go to some great lengths to double down on that prison theme.
For starters, the bar's dress code requires that you put on a bright orange high-vis jumpsuit with "JAIL CONVICT" emblazoned on the back, "to ensure you are easily identifiable to avoid escape until released," according to their online FAQ. Strangest of all, though, is that each "inmate" (read: customer) has to "smuggle in" their own liquor for the "working inmates of Alcatraz" (i.e., mixologists), who will then serve said liquor in a course of four cocktails per 350ml bottle.
As SFGate points out, Alcotraz isn't the first bar to come up with the BYOB bar concept. Drop Dead Twice in Dublin asks that guests bring their own liquor as well, and so, too, does BYOC, a 1920s Prohibition-era themed bar also in the U.K. The difference is that these bars won't ask you to chill behind bars or put on a safety-orange jumpsuit.
The price for the whole "prisoner experience" will run you about £30, or $39. That gets you one hour and forty five minutes of being locked in a cell while being served cocktails by costumed mixologists.
Far be it from me to hand-wave away an "immersive experience" concept, but this one based on "prison life" seems a bit in poor taste. The injustices faced by inmates in real, actual prison are well-documented (see this Alternet article, for one), and the experiences of people in the U.K.'s overtaxed, overfilled prison system are, according to Eater London and The Guardian, well on their way to being parallel to those of inmates here in the U.S.
Sam Shearman, creator of the bar and founder of Inventive Productions, who are facilitating its pop-up run, told Eater SF that "[the] purpose of the bar is not to romanticize any wrongdoing. The bar just gently opens the door to fiction and TV showing Alcatraz." He also explained the concept being the BYOB-style service to Forbes, saying, "Our ambition is to redefine traditional cocktail bar environments. Where in traditional bars cocktails are ordered from menus and restricted to the owners design, we are trying to allow guests to bring their own drink of choice and have cocktails made specifically for them."
If you really want to check this out for yourself, then get on over to London, as this pop-up only runs until December 16th.
Related: Video: Vintage Footage Shows Alcatraz When It Was Still A Prison