Artist plans to meet American for dinner

NEW YORK -- A phone message to the nation: Please call 510-872-7326, Marc Horowitz wants to meet you for dinner.\nGo ahead dial it. If he doesn't answer, just leave him a message. That's what thousands of people have done after seeing his number scrawled on a dry-erase board in a Crate & Barrel catalog photo last fall.\nHorowitz, a conceptual artist in San Francisco, was working as a photo assistant on a shoot for the catalog when he came up with an idea for an art project that would question social barriers and maybe make the world a little smaller.\nThe dry-erase board looked too blank, so he decided to write his cell phone number on it and, if anyone called, maybe take a road trip to meet them.\n"It's about illuminating the importance of conversation between strangers," Horowitz said. "We just plug into our computers and think that's the way to live, but old-fashioned face to face is what it's about."\nIt's not his first madcap art project aimed at bringing people together. Last year, he ran errands with strangers, which consisted of picking out their cereal and folding their laundry. The 28-year-old also regularly sets up a coffee maker in Alamo Square Park and hands out free coffee to passers-by.\nThe dinner tour was supposed to be a three-month journey to meet a few dozen people, but now it has ballooned to include thousands of lonely souls. Horowitz left last week and plans to crisscross the country for at least a year.\nBut exactly who calls a number they see in a photo on the page of a Crate & Barrel catalog?\nGregg Piazzi, a 36-year-old chef who lives in Columbus, Ohio, was caller No. 34. He saw the number while flipping through the catalog, and stopped turning pages when he noticed it was not one of those fake 555-numbers.\n"What are you doing?" his fiancee asked when Piazzi whipped out his cell phone.\n"There's a real phone number in here," he said as he dialed. "I gotta call."\nHorowitz answered, they talked for a few minutes, and now dinner with Piazzi is a planned stop on the nationwide tour.\nOf course, callers left some nutty messages, including the occasional angry rant and at least one offer for sex. Many just hung up. Some yakked on and on about how they were raised by nuns, work at a gas station or take several kinds of medication.\n"A lot of people are lonely and they just want to talk to somebody," Horowitz said. "I think people are looking for excitement 'maybe I'll call this number, where is it going to lead?' I think it's just curiosity and about people wanting to reach out and connect with somebody."\nThe first call was from a Kansasan named Jake, "and it just started propelling east and west from there," Horowitz said.\nHorowitz eventually added his e-mail address and Web site to his voicemail greeting. After some publicity, his inbox was jammed with e-mailed dinner invitations, random ramblings and flirtations from New Hampshire grandmothers to Florida firefighters.\nThey beg him to visit their homes and towns, offering "a mean lasagna" in Georgia, a "place to crash" in Massachusetts, "something like chicken and dumplings" in Alabama, coffee in Wisconsin and Shabbat dinner in Maryland.\nIn their e-mails, they share intimate details. One woman in Las Vegas is saving up for gastric bypass surgery and another in Texas is going through a "divorce from hell." Nonetheless, she thinks "your dining with strangers across America is neato!"\nOne after another, they gush about how much they love Horowitz and his attempt to have dinner with thousands of strangers, a venture that "put a smile on my face and a skip in my step," a fan chirped from Texas.\n"It is because of people like you that I have a renewed hope in mankind," one woman confessed in a 6:25 a.m. note.\n"Congratulations for giving us something to talk about outside of the election, terrorism, and Paris Hilton," another wrote from Pennsylvania last fall.\nHorowitz sold his truck, bought a mini-RV, sublet his apartment and held a garage sale to help fund his journey. He has rejected offers to turn his adventure into a TV show or documentary, which he believes would poison the organic purity of the conversations he hopes to have. But, he allows, he might write a book.\nSome people would rather light themselves on fire than eat dinner with their own families, much less a houseful of strangers lonely enough to dial a random number. What is Horowitz thinking?\n"It's about really listening and knowing that everybody has something important to say and that their stories are fascinating," he says. "This is real conversation with real people. It's something you can't buy"