This is the New Yorker Radio Hour, a co-production of WNYC Studios and the New Yorker.

This is the New Yorker Radio Hour.

Ian Frazier has been writing for the New Yorker since the 70s when he was fresh out of college.

Ian, or Sandy as most of us call him, is a writer of tremendous range.

He's written some of the funniest pieces we ever

published but also a tremendous body of deep and sensitive non-fiction

reporting. He's got a unique gift for capturing the essence of a place. He's written about the

Great Plains, about Siberia, about Staten Island, and we just published a piece

by Ian Frazier about New York City's sometimes most overlooked

borough, the Bronx.

The Bronx is a hand reaching down to pull the other burrows of New York City out of the harbor and the sea.

Its fellow burrows are islands or parts of islands.

The Bronx hangs on to Manhattan and Queens and Brooklyn, with Staten Island trailing at the end of the long tow rope of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge,

and keeps the whole business from drifting away on a strong outgoing tide.

That passage is the opening of Ian Frazier's new book, Paradise Bronx.

It came out of 15 years worth of long walks through the city streets

of that borough and on a recent very hot morning Frazier invited a colleague to

join him, the editor and writer

Zach Helfant.

He told me to meet him at the 170th Street Station underneath the elevated

tracks on Monday at 930 and he said to bring comfortable shoes, sunblock and water.

Hi, Sandy.

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