SPOKANE – Just after 11 p.m. on a recent Friday, 22-year-old Anthony Moran stepped onto the legs of a Bloomsday statue and read the rules of Urban Capture the Flag to nearly 100 teenagers and young adults.

For those who show up every week to exercise and socialize, it was a routine event. For Moran, it was a privilege to kick off the celebrated game that invades a dozen blocks in the heart of Spokane each Friday night.

“What’s cool about this game, really, is it’s a chance for people of the Spokane community to experience a little freedom,” Moran said after his presentation.

Boys and girls, men and women – from younger than 14 to older than 25 – overrun the streets and sidewalks to play the schoolyard game. They break into two teams, sometimes consisting of more than 30 people each, and conspire to cross into enemy territory and grab the opposing team’s flag.

They can sneak or they can sprint – but if they’re tagged, they go to “jail,” where they remain until another team member can tag them out.

If they manage to run the opposing team’s flag back to their side, their team wins.

But for Travis Rhiel, the self-proclaimed anarchist who started the event last year, it isn’t about winning or losing.

“The idea behind capture the flag is to explore the city in an intimate way and to become familiar with it in a more nontraditional way,” the 23-year-old said.

Rhiel said he first had the idea to start publicizing a giant game of capture the flag when he heard about similar games in other cities, including Olympia. Since its inception on July 4, 2006, Spokane’s game has attracted new players every week. It’s jumped from about 30 attendees to nearly 100 in just a year.

The game spans the sidewalks and courtyards bounded by Spokane Falls Boulevard, Stevens Street, Sprague Avenue and Lincoln Street. Wall Street divides the teams’ territories and is the neutral zone where nobody can get tagged and where dozens of other youngsters hang out while their peers play.

Kylie “K” Shelton, a 16-year-old student at North Central High School, said she comes every Friday to make friends she wouldn’t have made at school.

A few months ago she met Julius Schott, and the two have been dating since. When he graduated from Lewis and Clark High School in June, the 18-year-old joined the majority of people who turn out for Urban Capture the Flag: college-aged kids.

Schott said he likes how diverse the crowd is. Hipsters, students, gays, jocks, bookworms of all different ethnicities and abilities turn out to play. And he likes the exercise he gets running around downtown Spokane.

“When you’re really into it, it’s fun,” Schott said. “You don’t really care that you’re getting hurt all the time.”

The injuries, though minor and rare, often keep people from playing during the icy winter. Considerably more people play during the summer months, but there are a few die-hards when things get cold.

“Rain, we’re good. Snow, we’re good,” Shelton said. “But if it’s snowing for about a week, we’ll say, ‘Hey, not this week.’”

Sometimes fewer than 30 play during the winter; on an average summer Friday, 90 isn’t an unusual turnout, said 21-year-old Nick Gordon. He’s played with Rhiel and his friends since the very beginning before the downtown game, when they played in city parks and parking lots.

Gordon said he started because there’s not much for people to do in Spokane between the ages of 16 and 21.

On that Friday, he stood on the corner of Wall and Riverside as people strolled and sprinted past him. He’s often the “bag man” manager of the yellow “caution” and red “danger” tape players tie around their heads or wrists to signify which team they’re on.

“We all know each other pretty well, just a bunch of friends having fun,” he said. “I mean, sometimes some troublemakers come out here, but we don’t want that.”

Players said police don’t give the group too much trouble. Some said they’ve had small run-ins with officers, but jaywalking seems to be their biggest crime.

“You can try to follow traffic laws, but when you’re being chased by 30 kids because you’ve got their flag, often it ends up in the street,” Rhiel said.