John Patrick Michael Joseph Springer: Operates a ropes course that teaches team building skills.
Barbi: wife, business partner, and Amazing Cook!
Kelsey: daughter
Lauren: Assistant

Today we finally got out of San Francisco, and headed north to Santa Rosa If it weren’t for the giant hand written Dinner With Marc sign at the edge of the road, I would have driven right by John And Barbi’s place. They lived on a dirt road that had plastic speedbumps. It looked like it was going to be a rough start when some neighbors across a field mooned me. They were hooting and hollering and waving beers. I was starting to wish for the safety of city streets.

It is good that John works in the great outdoors, because this is where his personality can fit. He reminded me of a happy sea captain. A big chest, trimmed beard, and instant smile, he invited me to spend an afternoon at his ropes course.

He has a place on the top of a beautiful hill in Occidental, which is a little lumber town with windy roads and old redwood sheds leaning this way and that. I parked the RV by the cow barn and John pulled his white diesel Mercedes next to me. From the trunk he took out a giant loop of Lycra, that stretchy synthetic fabric.
This was the first “team building experience”. Four people get inside the loop, making the four corners of a box. Looking at the person diagonally across from you, you run towards them, high-fiving so as not to crash into each other. When you hit the Lycra where they just were standing, it absorbs you, you spin yourself around as it shoots you back to where you started. The amazing thing is, while you are doing this, the other two people who were diagonally across from each other are doing this as well. It begins to look like a stripped down trailer park version of the giant round metal cage at the county fair where two motorcyclists ride bisecting paths, narrowly avoiding each other as they go faster and faster.

As far as learning a team-building lesson, perhaps it is the notion that energy can be transferred, not lost, and my flight is based on my partner’s spring. Working together, we can create a Midway attraction with just a few feet of man made fabric.

The next lesson was in tight rope walking a steel cable that stretched between two live oaks, about twenty feet apart. The wire was strung across a three hundred foot deep gorge, and John had a grease gun in a fitting, pumping lubricant across my path.

“Imagine this field is burning, and the only way to live is to make it across the wire. I will release the leopards in just a few minutes, so take a minute and decide how you will live to eat dinner tonight.”

These corporate team-building retreats are vicious! No wonder America is the only superpower standing…

In reality, the wire is a foot over solid ground. But John has a dream job. He spent his youth traveling the world, seeing how people made money. He has started businesses and invented things. Now he is married and settled, but it seems the world comes to him. All types of people visit his FourWinds adventure program: HIV + support groups, cancer survivor groups, troubled youth programs, CEO’s of major corporations, and family reunions.

Coming up from San Francisco and stepping into the forest instantly calms me down. Is it because I’m not looking at strangers, trying to digest the information their clothes are communicating? I’m looking at trees, and they all seem friendly. The sky is clear, the view includes the islands off the coast of S.F, rolling hills, forest, clouds, and not one car with a booming system, no panhandlers, no ads for watches, shoes, or weight-loss. In four hours I’ll be looking for a coffee shop, but until then, nature is perfect.

John has more stories than a really tall building.

Let’s look at the highlight reel:

Attempted to develop disposable kitty litter trays, one-use plastic liners that come pre-packed with litter. He wound up in the patent office in Virginia, and discovered hundreds of similar ideas, but the lack of recyclability changed his mind.

He and a friend built a raft out of telephone poles and loaded a couch on it, along with a freezer that worked as a refrigerator, and a tent. They set out down the Mississippi river, getting caught in whirlpools and shoreside bars. There were many adventures.

Quotes from John:

“I may be wrong, but I’m never in doubt”

“I’m a raging extrovert.”

“The Universe is made of stories.”

After getting tied to a harness and climbing fifty feet up the side of a pine, Lauren hooked me onto the zip wire. Lauren volunteered to come up from Berkeley to help John lead me through the course, and she stayed for dinner. She was just back from Africa, where she had her hair wrapped in tight coils of fiber. She was so much more adventurous than me! I inched my way to the edge of the wooden platform, looking through pine branches, out to the field where the wire was attached to another pine. It looked to be about 250 feet I would be swinging through the air. But I don’t like heights, so it was actually hard to see, since I was wincing and feeling my stomach

It is tradition to stop at the bar on the way back from the woods. It is a small town affair, across from a gigantic hardware store that sells tractors and rocks, along with all the stuff a city hardware store may carry.

With that in mind, it was a learning experience. We needed more time with John. His wife and daughter were very shy because of the camera. So again I have to balance the dinner tour now with the ability to get the message to a large audience. I do not want to be an artist in my spare time. I have no spare time with a project this huge. So I need to think about exposure. It is such a strange dichotomy.

Here is what we learned.

Spend more time with people, so that those who are nervous around a camera will get used to it and forget it is there.
I am approaching these dinners with the intent of sharing them with a larger audience. It is an art project, not a personal one. Art needs audience. So I need to interact more with my hosts. John had such amazing stories, I sat and listened in awe. He is a powerful speaker, he is even a motivational speaker sometimes, so he has perfected his story telling.

We stayed late at the bar talking about so much stuff, a lot about the future of this project, about finding a meaning it someday, even if we couldn’t right now. We talked about the dinner last night with the burning man guy. Lauren is a part of that community. John made an interesting observation about both himself and Larry, who were both counterculture guys who now have a CEO position, if not the title. There is a burden of being in charge.
“Being from the sixties, we was two types of leadership. Lead from the front or from the back. You can stand up and tell people what to do, or you can be the guy from the back of the crowd that makes a comment that galvanizes everybody, solidifies the course. And then it flows under its own power.”
Larry and John are trying to allow for both methods, and it is a struggle.

Dinner
Barbi made our dinner plates into beautiful pictures. Is there a connection between palette and palate? A flat board to mix paints, and a refined sense of taste? It was thin noodles as the base, with giant prawns and scallops ringing the edge of the plate. In the center was perfectly grilled salmon topped with ricotta. Sun dried tomatoes floated along the top of a white sauce. And we screwed up opening night by coming in late and then taking some time to set up the camera, which is always a slow process. The thing is, it was still delicious. She had the fine Waterford Crystal out, and filled with wine and water. What a change from last night, eating cheap pasta in a crowded RV on plastic plates, drinking beer from a bottle.

Here’s a message some kind fan left on my voice mail.

“yeah… this is chuck, and I’ve been waiting for you marc hershawitz (Note: not my last name)
my wife, I caught my wife looking at pictures of you, telling me she wants to fuck you

let me tell you something mother fucker
you wanna talk to her about fucking? talk to me about fuckin’, I’ll beat you down like a stupid bag of bricks,

You better get your shit about you right… I’ll have dinner and your paying, you son of a bitch, and I’ll fix you up good and proper if you don’t leave a tip,
(a voice in the background) : tell him my car needs washing

Yeah, and Ed’s car needs a washin, people are dying in the street and you’re trying to take my lady out dinner you fuckin faggot.”

I’m thinking to myself, “I don’t want people to die in the street. I just want to talk to people about life. I don’t want to be called a faggot, or wash his car, or fuck his girlfriend. Man this is good coffee.”

Here we are at John Springer’s enjoying desert! There’s Clark on the camera and Jon, the intern’s hands on the boom. I’m wiping all kinds of frosting from my new mustache.

name: Larry Harvey
age: 57
nickname: Patchy Dense Fog “I didn’t embrace it, but it’s a frequent condition around here.”
Occupation: Hero and founder of Burning Man
Recommends: The Incredibly Sad Story of the Rainbow Man

I was very excited when a friend of mine, Lessley Anderson, offered to put me in touch with Larry, founder of counterculture mecca Burning Man. I’ve never been to Burning Man, but it’s a city of thousands that appears in the Nevada desert for a week at the end of August. He knows about how to bring people together and build community, and I wanted to hear his story.

We talked on the phone and he wanted to come have dinner in the RV, so I got a spot right in front of my house on McAllister and ran the extension cord from the garage for shore power.

Larry poked his head in the open door and asked, “Is this the dinner place?” He is so dry, I love it. He was wearing a cowboy hat and cowboy duster jacket. This was the first dinner and I forgot to take a picture of the man, but his cowboy hat looked very similar to the one in the picture I posted above.

Lessley showed up with a gallon of vanilla caramel swirl that quickly melted in the refrigerator, and spinach salad. You can’t understand how small the RV is, and there were five of us in there. Jon was in the sleepover cab, taking notes, Clark had the video camera going, and Lessley was about three inches from the lens cooking up some linguine, while Larry and I sat at the table. When she put the onions on the skillet to sauté, our eyes began burning.
“Open the windows” the cry went up.
“No” Clark cried. “The street noise will blow out the body mic’s.”

He was right. So we stayed in there with our eyes burning, our nasal tissue sweating, and our stomachs rumbling because dinner was just about ready.

“I think it’s beautiful you’re going through California, people need to know about this state… it’s lost its cutting edge, it doesn’t seem relevant, with the last elections and all.” Lessley said.

This got us talking about politics, and Larry got me thinking about how our country is going more and more away from social to private ownership. We are going towards a private army in Iraq, and that’s scary. The private sector demands profit, and isn’t the criticism this war is about oil profit? What happens when we all agree that is a good idea to fight for?

I had a cigarette with Larry even though I’m fighting the flu. Everyone has it right now.
“It must be hard to manage a grocery store. I went into one today, and the OJ prices are slashed because it’s gonna move fast, and cold medicine is right up front. There is so much to think about.” I guess graduating from business school makes me think about these things.

Larry says, “There are more frustrated artists in advertising than anywhere else.”

I believe it.

We began to talk about the troubles brewing within Burning Man, but there is so much back-story I’m not aware of, we decided to talk about anything but Burning Man.

Lessley had to duck out early to get to her swing dance class with her husband, and Larry stayed a long time talking about how culture needs to be built, how big the universe is, and other things Lessley said reminded her of college. The plastic plates, the pasta for dinner, and existentialist conversation. We ought to do this more often.

Larry eventually had one more cigarette for the road, then headed up the hill on foot to his place just a few blocks away. This was a great beginning to the National Dinner Tour. Here on the sidewalk in front of my house.

In just a few short moments, I will repeatedly bash this bottle of Cook’s over the rear bumper in a prolonged and weary christening.

Your friend,

Marc Horowitz

So I’m heading out for the first leg of the National Dinner tour – California! In preparation, I’ve sold my truck and bought this gem of an RV. Despite the fuel leak and some other minor problems, I think it’ll do. Over the next few weeks I’ll be preparing for the journey.

As it stands right now, there will be no TV show or book and it’s all personally funded. The major media players wanted the project to be about dating – my quest to find a wife! Cause I wouldn’t budge and said the project is about community building and the importance of conversation, they took their interests elsewhere. Oh well! I’ll be doing some odd jobs along the way and trying to get funding from private sources, i.e. grants. Thanks to those who have supported the tour already with their private donations. So keep an eye out for me and maybe we can share some peanut butter and jelly sandwiches for lunch somewhere along the way. All the best!

In an effort to get another full-fledged national dinner tour off the ground, I have carefully placed my name and cell phone number on a piece of furniture in a well-known furniture catalog. I’m unable to make mention of the particular catalog, because they have requested that I remove their name from my site. This will in no way effect the tour, and I will complete it as planned, without mentioning “the catalog” company. The National Dinner Tour II is non-profit, non-commercial, and personally funded. It is based completely on chance (who will call the number on the piece of furniture), and the dinners will serve as a forum for individuals to share conversation and exchange ideas.

To Date, I have received over 15,000 calls and e-mails regarding the project. The calls range from Portland, MN to my very own San Francisco, and all the way accross the world in Japan, South America, Australia, The UK, Canada, The Vigin Islands and many other countries. Strangly, the project has already taken me to several homes through national and international radio, television, and newspapers.

If you would like more information or would like to participate in the project, please e-mail or call 510.872.7326. The project is slated to commence later this month and continue through the year. I’m interested in meeting with as many people as humanly possible as it is your life stories and hometowns that make this project happen.

click to listen to a few of the phone messages I received as a result of publishing my name and number in the catalogue

I’m looking to eventually produce a book/ documentary about the project, so keep your eyes peeled.

I recently did a huge media tour, which aided in the amount of calls cause they kept reproducing my number everytime I was on the air – click here to see the press video.

Here is what the Gothamist had to say about the tour on 10/08/04 just when the media started getting excited about it, things have gotten much bigger and changed quite a bit since:

Crate & Barrel Catalogue: A New Pick Up Scene

Who said snail mail was dead? A photo assistant who put his phone number in a Crate & Barrel catalog received 500 calls from the curious. San Franciscan Marc Horowitz added a bit of realism to the Hideaway Home Office Armoire by writing “Dinner w/Marc” and his phone number on the whiteboard (and, yes, Gothamist paged through C&B’s online catalogue to find the image, which was at the end of the book). And people called him, and now he’s got 70 dinner dates across the country lined up – dates with women, couples, and other people he felt were “interesting.” Naturally, Marc has a website, I Need To Stop Soon, and aspirations of turning his 70 “Dinners w/Marc” into a film. The Post reports that Crate & Barrel weren’t thrilled at first, but since the situation was out of their hands, their spokeswoman says, “We do have sense of humor — it happened and we have no ill feelings. But we do think Marc owes our CEO a dinner.” Gothamist is distressed by the sorry state of meeting people for some. Don’t these people have computers? There’s MeetUp, for God’s sake! But we’re impressed with Marc’s chutzpah. The boldest we’ve ever been with giving out our phone number is drunkenly insisting that a mutual acquaintance pass it along.
Posted by Jen Chung in Style