By Sarah Tippit
Wed May 4, 9:06 PM ET



LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Attention citizens of the world: Would you like to have dinner with a total stranger?

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If so please call Marc Horowitz at 1-510-872-7326. The 28-year-old conceptual artist from the San Francisco area not only wants to meet you, he wants you to become part of his newest art project.

Horowitz began his "National Dinner Tour" last year as a way to explore the idea of community among strangers. Since then he has driven a leaky 1984 Toyota RV from the organic chicken farms of southern California to the hallowed halls of Yale University, in search of food and conversation -- which he documents on his Web site, www.ineedtostopsoon.com.

He'll eat anything in the name of art from burned burritos to fine foie gras, although he told Reuters he is allergic to strawberries, and that burned onions and "Hawaiian chili" have recently caused him embarrassing gastric distress.

The project began when Horowitz, a former freelance photographer's assistant for furniture chain Crate & Barrel, got bored while setting up a shoot for the autumn 2004 catalog. A computer armoire with a dry erase board attached to its door just begged to be written on -- to make it look as if somebody really used the thing.

In a fateful burst of creativity, Horowitz scribbled a note: "dinner w/marc" and he added his own phone number.

"I wanted to take people away from that commercial experience of looking at something that wasn't real ... and offer them an alternative," he said.

Horowitz's dinner invite slipped past company proofreaders and appeared near the back of the catalog which was distributed nationally. Then his phone began ringing.

"The calls started in the Midwest with a guy named Jake from Kansas and fanned east and west from there. It has been such a bizarre thing," he said.

Two weeks later Horowitz said he had logged about 300 messages. Due to media exposure and word of mouth, the phone still rings and Horowitz has stopped counting the calls that have poured in from around the world. "The phone rings so much it's ridiculous. For a while it was ringing four times a minute."

When his mailbox jammed up, he added his e-mail address. He estimates the number of phone and e-mail messages from as far away as Japan and Australia so far to be more than 16,000.

The armoire still can be seen in the catalog, but the phone number has been etched out and no longer appears on the company's Web site. A Crate & Barrel spokeswoman declined to comment.

HIS CUP OF TEA

University-level art training emboldened Horowitz to embark on a series of conceptual art projects in San Francisco years ago. He has run errands for strangers and shared lunch with strangers at his favorite burrito stand. He also wheeled a coffee cart and a 1,300-foot-long (396-meter-long) extension cord from his San Francisco apartment down a hill to a public park, where he served cups of coffee to strangers.

Although it happened by accident, the dinner project seemed a natural extension of his earlier artistic work.

Surprisingly so far, nobody has had any objections to meeting him for dinner. There have been no requests for references or criminal background checks. Although he never stipulated that people were required to feed him, all but one (Gino, an injured wrestler in Bangor, Maine, who is down on his luck) have offered to provide a meal.

"People do put an enormous amount of trust in me, a stranger, which is promising in this country I think," he said.

There have been many interesting meals so far.

A group of Hispanic residents of San Juan Battista, California, not only prepared a home-cooked Mexican feast, they put on a show for him afterwards.

He spent the night on an organic chicken farm in Los Lomos, California. "The whole meal was organic. The salad was traded for at the farmer's market that day. The whole thing was created with their own hands. It was just excellent. I felt so healthy."

A motivational speaker in Santa Rosa, California, sent him on a ropes course 60 feet in the air before serving him a meal of linguine with scallops and shrimps. Horowitz said he was able to conquer his fear of heights.

The conversations have been eclectic. In a Michigan bar, a man of few words told Horowitz: "One man's landscaping is another man's crime scene. I paused and said, 'Hey, that's great' ... and then we had to go."

In San Diego, Horowitz, temporarily joined on his travels by two male friends, was confronted by skinheads who accused the group of being gay and proceeded to beat them up.

Horowitz, who escaped harm, ended up spending the night in hospital, making sure his friends would recover. Afterwards the two men returned home, leaving him to travel mostly alone.

Through phone, e-mail and his Web site, dinner invitations continue pouring in from thousands of people, including nurses on late-night shifts, a retired clam digger, lonely old women, and people recovering from grave illnesses. Others include a minister who wants to