Lunchtime Lotharios

As most bachelors have learned, a luncheon invitation to a bright, attractive female often meets with a wary rebuff. To improve the odds for success, a group of men who claim to be the "cream of the crop" of San Francisco bachelors have banded together to attract good-looking lunch dates. They call their organization the Tuesday Downtown Operators and Observers, and they pursue their goals and girls with such single-minded fervor that the club has become something of a city institution.

It started in 1949, when Linn Alexander, who then worked for IBM, ignored the fact that his regular Tuesday luncheon with two old friends was a strictly stag affair. He made a date with one of San Francisco's prettiest and brought her along. Her company proved so pleasurable that the trio decided to dump their all-male tradition; the TDOs (as the members call themselves) were born on the spot.

Since then the group has taken more than 3,000 women to lunch. And the TDOs, whose membership keeps changing as bachelors fall to matrimony, now number about 20, all professionals in their late 20s and early 30s. The luncheons themselves are held in a plush private dining room at Paoli's, a restaurant in the city's financial section; the walls are decorated with such masculine objets d'art as photos of prizefighters and antelope heads.

Recruiting the guests, who usually attend three or four at a time, is a responsibility assigned to each TDO by the club's "vice dean of women," a position currently held by Pete Flamer, an insurance broker. The girls who meet the club's criteria, he says, are "pretty, single and up for a good time with a great bunch of guys." They are found in all sorts of places: riding elevators, working in offices, at parties or walking the streets of the city. Even though the invitations come from strangers, they are seldom turned down. Explains a former vice dean: "A girl is more comfortable if there is a group of men interested rather than just one guy."

There is more behind the quick acceptances than a sense of security and the lure of a free candlelit lunch. In San Francisco, there are far more single men than single women, and eating with the TDOs gives a young woman the opportunity to size up a variety of young, affluent eligibles. "Here I was, one of two girls surrounded by some 20 guys, and all of them good-looking," burbles Nancy Noren, 27, one of the TDOs' recent guests. "I mean, like wow."

Wow, indeed. Many of the former TDOs have ended up marrying one of their luncheon guests.

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