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More than 100 people gathered at San Francisco’s Ocean Beach for a “Guttural Scream at the Sea” competition on Sept. 12
Participants were judged on volume, duration and style before joining together for a group scream over the water, per SFGATE
Olivia Gugliemotto won with a 121.9-decibel scream, which is roughly the volume of thunder or a siren
More than 100 people recently gathered at a San Francisco beach for an unusual competition: seeing who could let out the best scream.
Dubbed Guttural Scream at the Sea, the gathering — which took place at Vista Del Mar at Ocean Beach on Saturday, Sept. 12 — invited participants to yell as loudly as they could before joining together for a roughly minute-long group scream over the water, according to SFGATE.
Competitors were judged on volume, duration and style, with the winner taking home a small megaphone.
Olivia Gugliemotto won this mini megaphone at the Guttural Scream at the Sea event
Credit: Danielle Egan
The competition’s top prize ultimately went to Olivia Gugliemotto, whose scream registered at 121.9 decibels. For context, Amplifon, a health hearing company, lists a typical conversation at approximately 60 decibels, while 120 decibels is about the volume of thunder or a siren and “can cause immediate harm to your ears.”
Gugliemotto said while speaking to SFGATE about her award-winning scream, “I have screamed at the ocean before, and I grew up screaming at Lake Erie, so I have a lot of practice.”
She said her inspiration came from a range of things weighing on her.
“The world in general,” she said. “I live far away from my family. That makes me sad. Capitalism, the environment, genocide, a lot of things.”
Kyana Van Houten, an executive director at an arts nonprofit who lives in San Francisco’s Haight-Ashbury neighborhood, finished in second place.
Her scream lasted 6.78 seconds and reached 114.3 decibels. She also earned the highest style score of the competition.
Guttural Scream at the Sea event pamphlet
Credit: Danielle Egan
Van Houten said she initially had a plan for how she wanted her scream to sound — but abandoned it once her turn began.
“I was thinking of going high to low, but I didn’t really get to the low part,” she said. “I feel like you can plan ahead, but then when you get there and they say ‘Go,’ your brain shuts off and your body takes over and what comes out is meant to come out.”
The gathering was organized by Danielle Egan, a San Francisco-area entrepreneur and creator who co-founded Outernet, a startup aimed at encouraging people to spend more time away from their devices.
“I felt like I needed a really good scream, and I think it’d be more fun with other people,” Egan told SFGATE while discussing her motivation for organizing the event. “There’s a lot of things to scream about in this day and age, so I figured we’d just get a lot of different people together and scream.”
Before the competition began, participants went through group vocal warmups and then lined up to take their turns.
Egan said the performances ultimately went in a variety of different directions.
“I would say [they were] primarily pretty guttural — we do say guttural scream at the sea,” she said. “But people also got a bit performance-based. Some of them were more lyrical than others, some were deep, some were higher pitched. I think people put a lot of personality into the screams.”
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Egan did not immediately respond to PEOPLE’s request for comment.
After the individual competition wrapped up, the crowd came together for one final group scream. They then gathered by the ocean to share snacks, per SFGATE.
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