Amid it all, Frazier had the contented, pleased air of someone introducing me to a secret waterfall. "This is a place I really like," he told me. "This has been a really hopping center of the Bronx for a long time." He pointed across the intersection to a bodega and a Dunkin' Donuts. "That was where a famous jazz club used to be. I think it was called Club 845. Those steps right in front of it lead to the Manhattan-bound train, so I like to think of Charlie Parker or Billie Holiday coming out of there just at dawn, walking up those steps, and going back to Manhattan."
"What has existed in a place, and what has happened there, are hard to cover up," Frazier writes in his new book, Paradise Bronx, an ode to "New York's greatest borough." "The past bleeds through layers of accumulation like graffiti through whitewash." Paradise Bronx brings that philosophy, which could serve as a credo for Frazier's half-century career, to life.
To write the book, Frazier walked a thousand miles through the borough, talking to seemingly everyone he met, while simultaneously researching the Bronx's centuries of history. In Paradise Bronx, the past and present always comingle, as Frazier the walker/reporter visits, observes, and contextualizes the physical places where history (both grand and quotidian) occurred.
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