Prisoners in Alcatraz must have dreamed of many simple pleasures on those isolated, fog-bound evenings in America's most notorious jail . . . cold beer, warm women, wide open spaces.
But never in their most imaginatively wild dreams would the cons have fantasised that one day members of the public would - without a hint of extortion - hand over American dollar bills for the privilege of touring their island lock-up.
Alcatraz, which shipped out its last prisoner to mainland San Francisco back in 1963, has become one of the coastal city's most popular tourist attractions, its gritty mystique attracting close to one million people annually.
That figure is set to rise again this year, with the added impact of Sean Connery's involvement in Alcatraz-related mayhem, The Rock, which is playing in Hong Kong.
Alcatraz movies seem to be made every decade or so, featuring the macho-man star of that generation. Burt Lancaster starred in the Birdman of Alcatraz, Clint Eastwood was in Escape from Alcatraz. All allow a whiff of glamour to seep through the stone walls of the maximum security prison.
In truth, life at Alcatraz was bleak and brutal, its prisoners all incorrigible hard-nuts doing time for rapes, murders and robberies.
The only possible way of escaping this hellish existence was by sea, making the short but hazardous journey across San Francisco bay to the mainland. Most who tried had brief and fatal encounters with the Pacific Ocean, dying from hypothermia or drowning.