Jasmine Downey, 29, schedules surgeries at a hospital for work. In her free time, she digs holes. Deep ones, if she can manage it. Why?
“Because I might find treasure,” she said before she spent an hour digging a hole deep enough so she could fit the length of her body inside it.
“I have to keep digging until I find it, or until it gets dark, or until I get hungry.”
On Saturday afternoon, Downey joined around 200 strangers at Ocean Beach for the 13th “Hole Party,” a loosely organized gathering dedicated to the ancient, questionably productive act of digging.
The rules are minimal, said organizer Anna Magruder.
“There are two,” she said. “Everyone gets invited, and the hole gets filled in.”
Magruder came up with the idea a few years ago at Baker Beach, after digging a hole with friends and realizing it was, for reasons that remain unclear, extremely compelling.
“What if we got 50 people to do this?” she remembered thinking.
The first party was held in August 2022. By the fifth, in May 2025, 150 people showed up. There is no set schedule.
Magruder announces new parties on social media “whenever she feels like it.” Saturday’s was announced (opens in new tab) on Instagram 22 days earlier.
“There’s a primal urge to dig,” she said.
Jasmine Downey basks in her own creation: a hole the length of her body. | Source: Photo by Ezra Wallach
At Ocean Beach, that desire manifested in several pits at varying stages of ambition, with some excavators riding solo or working in large groups.
Nick Payne, 34, described the event as “a less destructive version of Burning Man,” which is to say, sandy and unnecessary.
Growing up on a large property in the Santa Cruz Mountains, Payne said he spent a lot of time doing manual labor with his dad — digging, hauling, building things that stayed built. This, he acknowledged, is different.
“It’s kind of fun,” he said.
Not everyone participated. Some people sunbathed. Some drank. Others found adjacent roles. Ryan Kersten, 41, forgot his shovel, but brought a guitar.
It is hard to resist the allure of digging holes on the beach. | Source: Photo by Ezra Wallach
The Oakland resident said he normally likes digging holes because he likes being at the beach — and because, as he put it: “if you’re at the beach, what else are you gonna do?”
Hannah Schoetz, 35, arrived with her husband. They both also forgot shovels, but were content to lay in the sand. Her attraction lay not in the holes themselves, Schoetz said, “but in the action of doing something meaningless.”
Kelly Carruth, 42, arrived with friends, drinks in hand. They had come from the No Kings protest nearby, but stayed, she said, “for the vibes.”
The group declined to dig, opting instead to observe. They oscillated between describing the scene as stupid and wholesome, often within the same sentence. It felt, unmistakably, like San Francisco.
It was a beautiful day to dig holes on the beach. | Source: Photo by Ezra Wallach
“Maybe they could be doing something more useful with their energy, like picking up trash,” Carruth said. “But I also feel like this is hilarious.”
Magruder resisted reading too much into the symbolism of digging holes only to fill them back in. No Sisyphus pushing a rock up a hill, no grand metaphor, no commentary on the futility of existence.
Instead, she pointed out a more immediate reward: if you dig deep enough, you can stand in the hole and look straight out at the ocean, eye level with the horizon.
“A bunch of strangers come together for a goal that’s kind of pointless,” she said. “It’s a surprisingly effective way to bring people together.”
Source: Video by Ezra Wallach