The beach at Coney Island was turned into a big hunk of Swiss cheese on Tuesday as seven post-grad slackers spent the day doing what comes naturally: digging holes.
For the fifth year in a row, a ragtag group of former Brooklyn Tech HS students convened on the beach near Stillwell Avenue to dig holes.
But this wasn’t just digging for the sake of digging. This year, there was a real goal!
“This year, we want to make a spiral that connects into a tunnel that goes into a seven-foot-deep hole.” explained Joseph Yassin, the head coordinator of the last four “holes” events.
Such an “achievement” would eclipse 2008’s legendary success: two seven-foot-deep holes connected by a seven-foot-long tunnel, a construction that Yassin called “an epic win.”
The spiral and the hole took four hours to complete, while the tunnel was on it’s way to being finished until the group was forced to stop by sundown. The spiral trench was five-feet-deep and had a 25-feet diameter, ending at an incomplete tunnel.
People gave the construction site strange glances all day, including FDNY EMTs who stopped by, and police officers who wanted photos. “To me, it’s a bunch of kids looking for an excuse to hang out at the beach,” say Charlie Yao, another organizer of the event. “It’s something fun to do but it’s also out of the ordinary.”
First time digger Paul Anthony Perez saw it as more than a day at the beach.
“The experience itself with a group of strangers is awesome,” he said.
But don’t try to look for the historic beach comb — Parks Department workers made the diggers restore the beach to its original pristine condition.
