The story of The Black Sheep Restaurant --
a continuing work in progress.

There probably won't be another Black Sheep, certainly not one like the one we founded in 1978. It stood for two decades as a place where families gay and straight could find a warm and classy welcome. It should have had no chance at all to succeed, we opened it in a neighborhood where whores and drunks infested the streets, trucks filled with men having sex, garbage depots, and run down warehouses all around.

My partner, John DeGodt and I believed that it was time for gays to have a place of OUR OWN. We needed some space to be in where we could be proud of ourselves, hold hands, feel romantic, and be treated as well as if we were in some straight restaurant. For the times it was a bold move. Especially so because of the risky location, which I believed in. It's become one of the hottest real estate markets in town right now, so I was right, and stupid to not buy a place when I had the chance.

We were a family of gays who believed in what we were doing, serving our gay community with the finest at a time when none was available. There was then no place which served good food, gave good service and where we could hold hands and feel as though we were in "our own place".

We made all our own pastries, and every one was a secret recipe. Dessert is and should be a happy and rich end to a meal. Ours weren't skimpy, they were rich and made you realize that you were here to enjoy yourself. I’ll share those secrets in my cooking classes, as well as some other of our recipes.

The Sheep was a place where a person who was persecuted or lost his or her job because of HIV or other gay-related reason would find work. We were a family. Sometimes we had to juggle, because only a very few employers in the city would do it, but we were all in the gay community, taking care of our own.

In late 1994 I became very ill and nearly didn't survive. It was a virus invading my brain. Our key people (chef) left believing that I was a gone goose. I had to fight the virus and a few treacherous predators, vultures who prey on the weak, while I tried to hold the Sheep together.

We'd stuck it out against almost all odds and business was getting back off the ground and then I even bought a piano to enhance the romantic atmosphere. Everything began to get better, including me. The lady (use the term generously) who lived upstairs, a dried up bitter pill excuse for a human being, didn't enjoy Cole Porter or soft dinner music, and forced her co-op board to sue the landlord so he sued us. Tons of bucks in lawsuits to resolve what could have been taken care of with a few polite telephone calls. It would have been okay because we almost had that problem licked, but the landlord's wife decided she wanted the place. She offered us peanuts one day, of course the offer was refused, and (guess what) we lost the lease. The landlord even led me to believe that he would extend the lease, but he lied, and let the marshal (and his missus) grab it at the last minute.

They sometimes do that so the tenants wouldn't damage the premises. As if I would ever harm a stone of the place I built and lovingly maintained for twenty years! He's a tennis player, that one, Mister Francis Greenberger, and I'm sure he's chuckling at his clever move and the way he grabbed back a choice piece of property and handed the plum to his missus. He skunked me, he did, with a straight face, he told me he was a man of honor and had to cover his reputation, which was why he was ‘forced’ to evict us.
It’s funny that thing about reputations, people who worry about them have the best reasons to do so. His legacy to me: "Trust no one"- - How he must have laughed at me.
I had finally forgiven them for what they did, and was about to call them and tell them I had let go of my anger, and learned that same week that she had passed away. It showed me to learn to not harbor grudges, and to let go of anger early on.

Our little family was scattered to the four winds. The whole place ended up in the dumpster, and 20 years of Greenwich Village history, a pretty landmark restaurant, was lost. Who would have thought that such a little place would have affected so many people's lives, but it did.

The new place turned out to be a spiffy, polished, generic restaurant with no soul. A toy for a rich lady. Of course it was deserted most of the time. It lasted two years and closed. The lady had taken ill. There are rich people who play games with other people's lives, and that's sad. They lack compassion. There’s a horse race in Kentucky they call a claiming race where the winner gets to take the loser’s horse, but it’s considered bad manners to take a man’s only horse. Down there they don’t do that. Landlords here in New York don’t bother with manners.

Me? I've got the wish I always wanted, to start a new life, and to be able to discover who I am outside of being a restaurant. It's been more than difficult, having lost my life’s savings, and all income. It’s exciting too.