;It's simple, really. Kurt Spath, 36, is a good-looking, eligible bachelor. He lives in Winter Park; he has a good job and a well-stamped passport. And he ;doesn't like fat chicks.
;;Spath's a busy guy, so he paid a dating service to cull the fat chicks from his dating pool. All was well when he lived in Miami, where the ratio of slim chicks to fat chicks is apparently much higher. But when he moved home to Orlando this past spring, the same dating service he used in South Florida ;wasn't providing him "high-quality" women. "Big boobs, big ass, kinda chunky," is how he describes the single ladies of Events and Adventures of Orlando.
;;Spath says he was promised that he'd be mingling with sophisticated, professional — and slim — women. Instead his potential pairings were "predominantly and severely overweight, and of low social economic status."
;;And so, this being America, he filed a lawsuit. Spath wants his money back.
;;***;
;;Kurt Spath thinks Kurt Spath is quite the catch.
;;"I do," he says. "Without being so superficial, I mean, I do. I'm 36, never married, 6 feet, 2 inches, about 200 pounds. I've even got a profile on Match.com."
;;On Match.com, where he goes by the screen name "I_Am_Employed," Spath describes himself as a "dog person." He likes to cook, and is one of those people who, when they write "I like to cook," follows it with "BAM!" Favorite things? "Browsing the tool corral at Home Depot. GRUNT! All they need is cocktail service and I would never leave."
;;He's an insurance adjuster by profession. And if you think that sounds boring, you don't know Kurt Spath. "I work in a fun part of the industry!" he writes on the site, "adjusting. But, I admit, I am evil, I cheer when a hurricane vacuumes up a trailer park because it makes me $$$$$$$."
;;And, of course, he mentions on his profile that he doesn't like fat chicks. "If you are ‘working' on losing weight please wait until the job is done. Please don't lie about this, you know its only fair, and would expect the same if you asked for it."
;;Spath has gone to great lengths to document the low-quality, high-weight women he says Events and Adventures has put before him. On a recent Friday, he enters the bar at the Big Belly Brewery on Church Street, camera in hand. He looks like every other single, heterosexual, downtown happy-hour drinker: loose silky beige shirt tucked into his khakis, hair coiffed to the carefree-man standard, clean shave.
;;A gaggle of about seven other Events and Adventures members — none of whom, it should be noted, are fat pigs (well, one, maybe) — mingle in the back of the bar as U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For" blares from the sound system, oblivious to the fact that they're being called out for their weight at a place called Big Belly Brewery.
;;"Only had to take one picture," Spath says, looking satisfied with himself. "Got 'em all in one frame."
;;He first signed on with Events and Adventures in January while working for an extended period in South Florida. He's been using singles clubs off and on for 10 years, looking for Ms. Right.
;;"I'm looking for the right one," he says of his bachelor status. "It just hasn't happened yet."
;;Down south, things were great. "That first group? It was a single guy's dream. I could tell you story after story," he says. "And in Miami, I was there three months and every weekend I was meeting a girl."
;;The trouble began when Spath returned home, transferring his membership from the 10-year-old tri-county South Florida franchise of Events and Adventures to the fledgling Orlando office, which only opened in August 2005. Other dating websites offer actual pictures of the kinds of events they offer, he says, while Events and Adventures uses stock "active" images; a girl on a horse, some unknown people hiking outdoors, and so on.
;;In South Florida, Events and Adventures employed "attractive" company representatives to attend the events, Spath notes in his small-claims suit filed Oct. 13, in which he is seeking the return of his full $1,140 membership fee. Here, he says, events are handed off to a "group leader."
;; "One can only assume this is because the attractive Orlando representative is embarrassed to be seen with the people in this group," he writes in his complaint.
;;Perhaps most alarming is Spath's assertion that Events and Adventures prices its memberships based on the appearance of applicants. That theory comes from his own experience; he's a good-looking guy and he claims he got a break. Other, presumably uglier, clients paid considerably more to join, he says.
;;Events and Adventures Orlando planner Megan Roddy says that's ridiculous.
;;"I can't sit here and look at any of my members and be like, ‘Oh my gosh, you are so fat!' I don't know how anybody could make fun of somebody and talk about their socioeconomic status and their weight."
;;Roddy has been on the receiving end of Spath's barrage of photos, e-mails and lawsuit threats. And she's had about enough.
;; "It's absolutely insane, and I'm having the hardest time," says Roddy. "And it makes me so angry every time he sends an e-mail about somebody's weight, or a visible breast tattoo, or a blue streak of hair or something. It's ludicrous."
;;Orlando's Events and Adventures club (there are franchises nationwide) is a ringing success, she says, with more than 400 active members and a book of glowing testimonials at the office. They offer at least one event every day of the month: from skydiving to dive-bar hopping.
;;If Spath wants slender women, he's probably going to the wrong events.
;;"If you want to do yoga, or you're the biker, the rollerblader, the softball player, then that's your thing," she says. "But then there's also the dinners and the movies for the people that aren't so active and don't want to have to be active all of the time."
;;According to Roddy, even Spath has been known to enjoy himself at one of their events.
;;"He was complaining for a while, and then he came to an event and there were a couple of girls [other members] that went to a happy hour at the Westin in August or September," she says. "He was just like, standing right behind them, like, trying to hang out with them the whole time. And he didn't seem to have a bad time then."
;;Emmet Avery, the owner of Events and Adventures of Orlando, notes that the price to join does vary from region to region, adding that the average yearly rate here is "less than $1,400." But that has nothing to do with how people look, he says; screening is limited to criminal records, a questionnaire and a reasonable eyeballing for sobriety.
;;He's no fan of Spath either. "I don't really know what his criteria is. Does everybody need to look like him and be like him and act like him? This is a club for people of all backgrounds, races, creeds and colors.
;; "I think he's kind of full of himself, kind of egotistical," he adds. "I don't know what crawled up his butt."
;; As for the lawsuit, Avery isn't worried.
;;"They're just literally going to laugh him out of court. ‘You know what, judge? The people in Orlando are just ugly and fat and whatever!' It's beyond me," he says. "He'll get nothing, because we have in our contract — like with any other product — a three-day right of cancellation, so if he wanted to cancel within three business days, he could have. He did not, and he chose to have a great time and decided to move up to Orlando. And for some reason, he's just not taken too keenly to us."
;***
;;Back at the Big Belly Brewery, Spath is getting a little wound up talking singles shop with a sympathetic pal who is also a member. From the speakers overhead, John Parr's chest-beating "St. Elmo's Fire" is reaching its "They broke the boy in me, but they won't break the man!" climax, and it seems to be the perfect time ask Spath the obvious question: Why not just go out to the bars and pick up girls like everybody else?
;;"Because I pay not to have to," he answers with a grin. "I like them to corral them so ;I can pick. Y'know, gather 'em up and go hunting!"
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