Piss Clear misses you, Larry!

In the 25 years I’ve been going to Burning Man, I’d run into Larry Harvey quite a few times, and even had the pleasure of having a couple lengthy sit-down interviews with him for Piss Clear (my Black Rock City newspaper at the time, which has since morphed into the BRC Weekly). We always did our interviews at his favorite San Francisco haunt, Cafe International on Haight Street, which had an outdoor patio so he could smoke. One interview was for a cover story we did on him in 2000, the other was shortly after the 2003 Burn, when we had most of our infamous “Drug Issue” confiscated by law enforcement officials, and Larry wanted to explain to me personally how that happened. He was verbose, intellectual, passionate, rambling… and always fascinating. It was always a treat whenever he would randomly stop by our camp, as he did in this photo, taken on Monday, August 27, 2007, shortly before all hell broke loose when the Man started burning, due to prankster Paul Addis setting it on fire five days early. Larry Harvey created something epic and special, and he knew it. Yet he always appeared humble and a little surprised himself that That Thing In The Desert became such a “thing,” practically needing to reverse-engineer a POINT to it all when he eventually came up with the 10 Principles as late as 2004. As much as he began to take a backseat in more recent years in actually running Burning Man, his presence always loomed large, and I’m sure it will continue to do so. He’s left quite a legacy, and we here at the BRC Weekly will definitely miss him. Here’s the cover story interview with him we printed in Piss Clear way back in 2000, nearly 18 years ago: http://www.pissclear.org/Articl…/…/LarryHarveyInterview.html