As a high school student in Batavia, Kevin Fitzpatrick was more comfortable hanging out with his Commodore 64 computer, “information sharing” on bulletin boards, than hanging out with kids his age. “I was very much, umm, introverted and not mingling and social,” he says. By the time he graduated in 1984, he was determined to be different. “It was like, OK, I want to change. I want to go out, I want to mingle—I’m going to socialize.”
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After graduating in 1989 and taking a job as a computer programmer at the Chicago Board Options Exchange, he started calling friends in the run-up to the weekend or before going out to let them know where he’d be and when in case they wanted to meet. When he moved back to Batavia a couple years later he set up a second phone line and equipped it with an answering machine that his friends could call anytime to find out what he was up to instead. Each week Fitzpatrick recorded a new outgoing message detailing upcoming events and his own personal social calendar; he called the service “Your Event Hotline.”
Fitzpatrick, now based in Downers Grove, logs about 25 hours “if not more” each week scouring several dozen sources—including the state of Illinois and city of Chicago Web sites—for events. Usually by Wednesday he’s put together a list of 60 to 100 items, ranging from semiprivate parties to comedy shows to wine tastings.
“I first started seeing him every time I went out—at charity events, happy hours, pub crawls, etc,” says Eve Kotlarz, who’s known Fitzpatrick about eight years and has been receiving his e-mails for about six. “I don’t think there was an event I attended that he was not at.”
On a recent Sunday Fitzpatrick and about a dozen mostly thirtysomethings were gathered at the back of Witt’s bar in Lincoln Park having drinks and sharing appetizers. Fitzpatrick’s cell phone was clipped to his belt.
But Fitzpatrick’s got things other than money on his mind: getting people out and mingling. “I just feel bad, ’cause there’s people that’s sitting at home like I used to be,” he says. He’s proud that YEH has brought about two jobs, four engagements, and 11 marriages resulting in about a dozen children. Plus, he says, “obviously I want to go out and do things, and I’d rather not do them by myself.”
