Alcotraz, the new immersive cocktail experience coming to Manchester next month, hasn’t gone down too well with everyone.
The alternative night out concept began in London and was so successful that they launched another in London and a third in Brighton. The new Manchester venue, 'Cell Block Three-Four, will open in the former Epernay site on Watson Street in July. It will be the first Alcotraz experience up north.
The ‘bar behind bars’ dresses its guests up as ‘inmates’ in US penitentiary orange boiler suits and gives them their own prison ID number. The idea is that visitors become part of the story, encountering a cast of actors as the story plays out before they can get a drink.
Once in their cells, inmates will encounter a cast of shady characters and the jail’s notorious bootlegging gang who task them with trying to ‘smuggle’ liquor past the warden. Their goal is to reach Alcotraz’s longest-serving inmates, who will then create contraband cocktails for them. After the main experience, inmates can enjoy their cocktail and ‘prison rations’ within the prison canteen.
Sam Shearman, creator of Alcotraz and founder of Inventive Productions says: “The experience has been so popular within London that within a very short period of time we were able to grow the Alcotraz brand to have multiple sites, including one in Brighton. We are now absolutely thrilled to bring this unique concept to Manchester and launch our biggest and most ambitious Alcotraz to date”.
But although some people think it’s a bit of a laugh, many people have responded negatively towards the idea, suggesting that it’s actually in really poor taste.
“There are around 87,000 people in prison in the UK and approximately 2.12 million in prison in the USA,” says Ali Gunn, comms and campaign manager for an organisation that campaigns for social justice and a better care experience for vulnerable young adults across the North West.
“The owner claims that the Alcotraz ‘experience’ doesn’t draw on real life experiences of prisons, instead glamourises an environment which is a place of trauma and suffering,” says Ali, who has launched a petition to ask Manchester City Council to revoke Alcotraz’s bar licence.
The petition, which launched earlier this week, soon gathered 60 signatures. Many others took to Twitter to voice their disapproval of the new prison-themed bar. “It’s a bloody horrific concept” says one comment. “I’ve seen some appalling ones in the past but this just takes the biscuit,” says another.
Ali maintains that the idea of a ‘fun prison experience’ is in bad taste at the best of times, but especially at (hopefully) the tail end of a pandemic.
“It feels tone deaf that, as we reopen society, Inventive Productions feel a prison experience is the one to go with,” Ali argues. “Over the past 18 months people in prison have faced enforced 24-hour isolation in cells, often with another person. There have been no family and legal visits. Classrooms, gyms, libraries, and workshops have been closed and offending behaviour programmes and sentence planning have been placed on hold.”
What does Ali say to those who think she may be taking it all a bit too seriously? “I’d ask them to do a bit of reading into the state of our prison system and then order a pastie from HM Pasties for a fraction of the price of an Alcotraz ticket,” she answers.
Alcotraz: Cell Block Three-Four, will be unlocking its doors on 16th July, at 1a Watson Street, M3 4EE.
It costs £29.99 for seats within the Prison Commissary Area and £35.99 for seats within a Prison Cell.