How Burning Man Evolved From ‘A Crude Thing Stuck in the Sand’
On the 1986 summer equinox, a couple of friends, their kids, and a few associates went down to San Francisco’s Baker Beach, doused a wooden art piece with gasoline and lit it on fire.
The origin of Burning Man was innocuous enough. After all, bonfires on the beach are commonplace. But something about this event lit a spark (pun intended).
“It was a spontaneous act of radical self-expression,” co-founder Larry Harvey later recalled in the book This Is Burning Man, describing the original effigy that he and collaborator Jerry James created as “just a crude thing stuck in the sand.” “It wasn’t a work of art, really, by any normal standard.”
Though gasoline probably wasn’t the smartest choice — Harvey said it “practically blew up” — the original Burning Man tradition spawned an unexpected side effect: The crowd watching the artwork burn grew just as fast as the flames.
“Strangers ran and joined us,” Harvey recalled. “Suddenly the crowd doubled or tripled. The Man was near the waterline, so the people formed a small half circle around him and they too were delighted by the flaming humanoid form.”
Over the years, Harvey and James described the attraction of Burning Man in various ways, ranging from religious, to spiritual or primal reasons. Perhaps part of the attraction was that there was no singular explanation for why people were drawn to it. Whatever the reason, the men continued holding their Burning Man tradition each year on the summer solstice at Baker Beach. By 1990, the crowd was so big and the effigy so large (now 40 feet) that police shut the ceremony down.
If Harvey and James wanted to continue their tradition, they’d need a new location. Motivated by the popularity of their beach burns, and supported by a community of artists and bohemians who now believed in the event, the men turned their sights to Black Rock Desert north of Reno, Nev.
The early years in the desert — dubbed Black Rock City — were basic. Newcomers were invited by established burners, there were no paid performers or artists, and attendees agreed to abide by basic communal rules.
Each year, the numbers continued to grow and by 1996 — ten years after that original beach burn — Burning Man was opened to the public. The attention brought with it logistical issues — permits, county approval, agreements on fencing and safety measures. Meanwhile, Burning Man had to go corporate, becoming an official company with board members. None of these changes slowed the festival’s monumental growth.
In the year 2000, more than 25,000 people attended Burning Man. By 2019, it was around 80,000.
The communal element Harvey and James championed still lives on, with Burning Man’s economy famously working on a “gifting” system rather than money. The event still runs without commercial sponsorships, transactions or advertising and is largely self-sufficient. Still, many critics claim Burning Man sold-out in other ways. The festival’s popularity among the Silicon Valley tech community has resulted in polarizing figures like Elon Musk and Mark Zuckerberg regularly attending. Millionaire and billionaire burners have brought with them glamping — aka modern and luxurious accommodations, rather than the simple structures used in the past. Meanwhile, mainstream musical artists, including Diplo, Skrillex and Armin van Buren have been booked for the event — a far cry from Burning Man’s bohemian roots.
“I don’t really like the phrase counterculture, but it’s less of a secretive thing now — it’s much more mainstream,” a Burning Man spokesperson explained to Far & Wide in 2018. “Burning Man has gotten more popular, it is in the media in a different way than it was before. Because of that, people who traditionally maybe would not have even heard about it are now thinking of it as a place they have to see at least once.”
Harvey died in 2018 at the age of 70. In a tribute to its founder, the Burning Man Project remembered him as someone who “didn’t fit a mold; he broke it with the way he lived his life. He was 100% authentic to his core.”
