In the three weeks since its humble beginnings as a Facebook event, the Marquette St. Patrick’s Day Extravaganza 2012 has since summoned over 570 people from all reaches of the Marquette community.

The creators of the event , MBA graduate student Nick Mills and criminal justice major Logan Fish, were pretty astounded with the outcome of something that was created with the sole intention of calling together a handful of friends.

“We did this last year and it was just friends and Logan and me,” Mills said. “We just dressed up for St. Patrick’s Day and made a mini event out of it.”

Fish said they did the same thing this year, with the addition of a Facebook event, and the whole thing exploded pretty quickly.

“It wasn’t significant at first, but once it started to grow we thought, ‘Let’s see how ridiculous we can actually make this,’” Fish said.

He plans to make his Leprechaun outfit from last year more outrageous by dying his hair, beard and eyebrows orange. Mills will maintain his role as “The Zuit” for the event.

One of the goals of the event, aside from what Mills called a “social media experiment,” is to take advantage of the many specials that local businesses offer on the holiday. As of press time, 12 bars had announced their participation in the event, including Blackrocks, the Vierling, the Wooden Nickel, Upfront & Company and the Wild Rover, among many others.

The participating bars will have normal drink specials, but some are also providing additional deals to individuals involved in the event or those wearing the event logo, which can be found on the Facebook page.

“We will have rally points at certain times throughout the day to see how many people we can actually get to show up,” Fish said.

The rally points that were decided on were the Wild Rover at 9 a.m. for a traditional Irish breakfast and Guiness, Upfront and Company at 3 p.m. for lunch and finally the Blue Lounge at 8 p.m.

The complete list of participating bars is as follows: Blackrocks Brewery, the Wooden Nickel, the Wild Rover, the Vierling, Upfront & Company, Verabar, the Blue Lounge, Landmark Inn, L’Attitude Cafe & Bistro, Vango’s Pizza & Cocktail Lounge, The Doghouse and Remies Bar.

For those who don’t prefer to walk during the event or otherwise, a group of students from the Relevant campus ministry will be offering free rides to anyone who calls between 9 p.m. and 2 a.m. on Thursday through Saturday night. According to the groups’ advisor Deborah Heino, rides are offered to anyone who resides in Marquette, Negaunee or Ishpeming, and are free and confidential.

“We go pretty much all the way out to the west end of Ishpeming,” she said. “We do save Negaunee and Ishpeming)for the end of the night because that’s where my husband and I live, so we’ll head out there to go home after 2 a.m..”

For rides, call the dispatch at (906) 362-4669.