People overflowed into the street and crowded around the westbound bus stop at Haight St. and Fillmore St on Friday night. They whooped and threw glow sticks in the air, dancing freely to music pumping out of the rigged bus stop and a nearby car, and green lights flashed from the tiny shelter where people usually just wait for the 6, 7, and 71 bus lines.

This impromptu rave, like the pillow fights, zombie days, and big wheel races that came before it, is an example of people in San Francisco deciding to create their own fun for free. These peaceful free-for-alls help people forget about all the stresses and serious concerns of the day and just cut loose for an exciting good time.

This rave was organized by Brent Lowteck, 25, a San Francisco native who has rigged bus stops at least five times before this. He said he made the decision to have the rave only a week before, and spread the word by telling a few friends and sending an e-mail to a friend at laughingsquid.com, a website dedicated to “art, culture, and technology events” in San Francisco.

Most of the ravers heard about the event from a friend, who linked laughingsquid.com. The link showed a YouTube video of Lowteck’s last rave, which happened at the same bus stop. Lowteck said he thinks the video helped to get people to come out to the rave, but that mostly it was word of mouth that got the news out.

“It started as a flash mob, but now it’s way more people than I expected,” he said. “San Francisco is a great place for oddities.”

Many such “oddities,” including a protest against hills which was held in the city last week, are organized on sf0.org, a website that says it is a “collaborative production game” in which goals include “meeting new people, exploring the city, and participating in non-consumer leisure activities.” People become players by signing up for free and coming up with ideas, which they post for player and site-owner approval. The international site was founded by Sam Lavigne, Ian Kizu-Blair, and Sean Maham, 25, who was present at the rave.

Maham said they started the site 2 ½ years ago out of an interest for alternate reality games, in which “the alternate world intrudes on the real world.” The men decided that, instead of them creating a fake plot for their players to follow, they would set up situations in which people can create their own plots. Players shortly started organizing ideology-free events on their own.

Originally there were more rigidly structured levels, you go from being a passive observer to and active observer, from a passive participant to an active participant to an organizer. But what we should do is let people do that at any point along the way,” said Maham.

SF State alumni Leslie Carroll, 24, and Alex Oestreicher, 22, both heard about the rave on laughingsquid.com. “It shows the character of the city, that we don’t take ourselves too seriously, that we can get together and have fun at a bus stop in the Lower Haight on a Friday night,” said Oestreicher.

Shamari Rockca, 30, finished playing his weekly guitar gig in Café International and followed screams and whoops to the bus stop out front. Bus riders were also surprised at the crowd cheering for the bus as they pulled up to their stop, but none were annoyed by the ravers, one saying it’s a great thing to do on a Friday night.

One bus rider who decided to join the event was Saturday Thivodeaux, 29, who is getting his masters in film production at SF State.

“I was on the bus heading to the Upper Haight and I saw all the activity and just hopped off the bus,” he said. “It shows that San Francisco is a one of a kind city, spontaneous [and] with a love for expressing creativity and love with unrelenting freedom.”

Ethan Hopfer, a 22-year-old art major, filmed the event as a project for a digital video class. He heard about the event on an internet message board. “This is a great idea,” he said. “Friday night, free of charge.”

Other people who regularly attend raves appreciated the authenticity of this rave. “I think it’s a brilliant idea because it’s working off the remixing culture,” said Miguel Solari, 32, who was emailed the laughingsquid.com link by a coworker. “Look at the ground: they’re flyers just like at a real rave.”

The police came to the site three times before 11:00 p.m. The ravers would turn off the music, light up cigarettes, and stand around waiting for the authorities to leave. As soon as they did, the party was back on.

SFPD Officer John Lucchietti graduated from SF State in 2006 and was responding to a noise complaint about the rave. “The most important thing is the safety of the people around and the safety of the people who respond, the fire fighters and officers,” he said. “As long as they’re cooperative, I’m not going to bother anybody.”

By 11:00, the crowd was about half as large, but the remaining few kept the party going, having fun for free and clutching their brown-bagged beer bottles as they danced into the night.