The Rookery Returns

Despite recent alarms rung by the CDC, the city of New York is quaking with eagerness to wriggle out of COVID’s constrictive yoke. Spring is upon the land, vaccines have been found and bars closed for the winter have reopened. One of these is the Rookery, a Bushwick bar that has Britain and the West Indies in its DNA, Premier/Champions league soccer beaming from the TV and a menu of humbly-priced, well-executed pub food stocking its larder.

The West Indies influence comes from Shana Schmitz, who, along with Jamie Schmitz, owns the Rookery with a few other partners. Shana was born in New York to a Jamaican mother and a father from Dominica, an English-speaking Caribbean island not to be confused with the...[click here to read the full article]