Before he jumped into the gaping pit of sand, the man got a running start. Starting from behind the piles of loose sand that lined the hole’s rim, he dashed forward and leapt. He executed his trick, a clean side flip, quickly. As his body tilted back in the air, his sandy hair flopped in his face. When his feet hit the earth, his audience — a crowd of young people armed with shovels and spades — clapped.
This was hardly the most unusual encounter at Saturday’s Hole Party, a gathering of around 250 people. The crowd, a mix of strangers, students, blue collar workers, roller skaters and queer fight night attendees, gathered at Ocean Beach to work towards a shared goal: to dig a really big hole. And later, as the sun began to set, they worked to fill it back in.
Why go through the trouble? “There’s no real reason, but it is a surprisingly good way to bring people together,” Anna Magruder, 29, told SFGATE…