The Man Who Started Burning Man

Larry Harvey, the guru-like driving force behind Burning Man, the globally celebrated anti-establishment, anti-consumerist festival that he and a friend began 32 years ago on a San Francisco beach, died on Saturday at a hospital in San Francisco. He was 70.

The first Burning Man (@burningman), held at Baker Beach (famous for its Golden Gate Bridge views and nude-sunbathing section), was a cozy affair hosted by Mr. Harvey and a friend, Jerry James. It consisted of burning a scrap-lumber statue of an eight-foot-tall man and was attended by fewer than a dozen people — including Mr. Harvey’s son, Tristan, who was 5 — although a crowd soon gathered to watch. It was a summer solstice celebration; Mr. Harvey sometimes said it also commemorated a romantic breakup.

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