Wednesday, June 12, 2019

The NYC Transit Authority’s Bus Operator Safety Initiatives


Monday, May 20, 2019

Three Top Music Venues to Visit While in New York


Barry Baldwin resides in Brooklyn, New York, where he provided nearly three decades of service in the role of bus operator with the NYC Transit Authority during his career. During his work in the public transportation industry, Barry Baldwin received numerous awards for safety and service to the public. In 2005, Mr. Baldwin was also the recipient of an American Disabilities Act award for providing outstanding service for people with disabilities. Mr. Baldwin enjoys a range of hobbies including exercising and listening to blues, jazz, rhythm and blues, rock, and pop music.

New York City is home to numerous well-known music venues. Three of New York’s top venues to visit while in the city are described below.

Radio City Music Hall is located in the Midtown West part of Manhattan and has offered entertainment to its patrons since the 1930s. This hall features a massive stage (which many musicians dream of performing on), and a 6000-seat theater space featuring Art Deco details.

The Blue Note is situated in Greenwich Village and is considered a top venue for jazz artists. This venue features close-set tables so guests can easily mingle and plays host to both emerging performers and musical titans such as Ron Carter and Chick Corea.

Located in Midtown West, Madison Square Garden is possibly the most famous sports arena on the planet. Since 1968, this 20,000-seat venue has been a top spot in New York to see various concerts and famous touring artists including Phish and Radiohead.

Thursday, May 9, 2019

Popular Cycling Routes in New York City


Barry Baldwin is a respected presence in the New York City, having operated an NYC Transit Authority bus for many years. A fitness enthusiast, Barry Baldwin walks approximately five miles a week and takes out his bicycle for extended rides on the weekend. 

New York has a diverse and extensive network of cycling paths and routes, including the 13-mile long Westside Greenway Path, which runs from the George Washington Bridge to the Staten Island Ferry. Relatively flat, the paved course takes in the view of the Hudson River and offers plenty of riverside parks to stop at and take a break. 

For adventures that seem to leave the city behind, a route along Bedford Avenue from Prospect Park’s north end traverses Brooklyn College and arrives at Sheepshead Bay, which is used by charter fishing vessels. From here, a greenway extends to empty stretches of beaches in the vicinity of the Rockaways’ Fort Tilden.

One of the perennially popular Manhattan cycling spots is at Central Park, which offers a six-mile course that encompasses hilly and flat terrain. Easy to hop on and off, this loop has the drawback of often heavy traffic and is closed to cyclists on the weekends and holidays, as well as some weekday hours.

Monday, April 15, 2019

Studies Reveal Listening to Music Enhances Exercise Performance


Barry Baldwin presently resides in New York and previously served as a bus operator with the NYC Transit Authority for 27 years. Prior to his role with NYC Transit Authority, Barry Baldwin of New York operated mailroom machines at Chase Manhattan Bank. Mr. Baldwin currently enjoys an array of hobbies including biking, walking, working out, and listening to various genres of music

Listening to music not only makes exercise more exciting, but it is also proven to enhance workouts. Listening to music boosts exercise performance through an improvement in the mood and stamina. In particular, songs with a steady beat which are synchronized with exercise are believed to increase the motivation to continue to exercise and boost the intensity of the workout. This finding was backed up by a 2012 study led by C.I. Karageorghis and D.L. Priest. The same study revealed that physical performance improved when participants listened to fast-paced music during low to moderate level exercise. 

Earlier in 2010, C.I. Karageorghis conducted a study which showed that music could distract from pain experienced during exercise and could, in turn, increase work capacity and delay fatigue.

Friday, March 22, 2019

Three Interesting Things You Probably Didn’t Know About New York


Barry Baldwin of Brooklyn, New York previously held the position of mailroom machine operator at Chase Manhattan Bank before becoming a transit driver for the NYC Transit Authority. In his role as a driver, Barry Baldwin received recognition for providing outstanding service to people with disabilities and driving buses safely in New York City.

New York City is the most populated city in all of America and one of the most fascinating places in the world. Here are three things you may not have known about New York City:

1. New York City has a low crime rate relative to other big cities. Of all large American cities, New York City has had the lowest crime since 2005, partly due to efforts to reduce criminal activity in Times Square. 

2. Musicians must audition to perform on New York’s busiest subway platforms. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority grants two-week permits to musicians who have been selected through a competitive auditioning process for the best spots on the city’s subway platforms.

3. The world’s first underground park is in New York. Called the Lowline, New York City will be home to an underground park set to open in 2021. This all-natural green area spans 1.5-acres in the Williamsburg Bridge Trolley Terminal and will use solar technology to transmit sunlight underground using a reflective surface.

Thursday, March 7, 2019

Research that Proves the Powerful Health Benefits of Walking


A long-time resident of New York, Barry Baldwin served in the community as a bus operator with NYC Transit Authority for nearly three decades. Barry Baldwin of New York enjoys a range of personal interests including listening to music, working out with weights, bike riding, and walking five miles each week.

According to research findings, walking regularly significantly reduces the risk of chronic diseases and other health conditions. Below are some of the main benefits of walking.

Walking for only 21 minutes per day, or 2.5 hours each week, lowers the risk of developing heart disease by 30 percent. Scientists at the University of Tennessee and the University of Boulder Colorado determined that regular walking may also lower the risk of stroke by 20-40% while reducing blood pressure by as many as 11 points. 

Regular walking is believed to help prevent diabetes, cancer, and obesity. A study conducted by the University of Utah in 2014 determined that women lowered their risk for obesity by five percent for each minute of brisk walking they performed.

Friday, February 15, 2019

The Roots and the Future of Rhythm and Blues


Retired after 25 years and multiple commendations, former New York City Transit Authority bus driver Barry Baldwin now has the time to delve into his favorite pastimes. These include a wide range of music interests, particularly in jazz, blues, rock, pop, and rhythm and blues. For New York’s Barry Baldwin and other fans, R&B remains a vibrant form of musical expression, and one of the signature genres in the history of American music.

Musicologists typically trace the origin of rhythm and blues to the jump blues popular at the close of the 1940s, and ultimately to early African American spirituals. R&B, with its blues chords and drumming backbeat, changed its parent genre by putting greater emphasis on the lyrics and less on the instrumentation. R&B itself would morph into soul music, and into early rock and roll.

In the 1950s, R&B produced a host of notable individual singers, like Etta James, Fats Domino, and Ray Charles, and groups like the Drifters, the Platters, and Little Anthony and the Imperials. Today, numerous well-known artists incorporate elements of traditional R&B into their work. These include Alicia Keys, John Legend, and Erykah Badu.

Wednesday, February 6, 2019

Ken Burns and Wynton Marsalis Tell the Story of Jazz


A multi-awarded bus driver commended for his public service, Barry Baldwin served with the New York Metropolitan Transportation Authority until 2014. He was the recipient of accolades for his attention to safety and to the rights of disabled passengers. Now retired, Barry Baldwin has been able to deepen his interest in music, particularly in jazz, blues, R & B, pop, and rock. 

A quote attributed to the great jazz trumpeter Louis Armstrong said that, if someone had to ask what jazz is, they would never be capable of knowing. 

In 2000, the popular and widely acclaimed documentary filmmaker Ken Burns tried to answer that question with another in his series of monumental PBS documentaries, simply titled Jazz.

The 10-part, 19-hour series attempts to encapsulate jazz - with its blend of free-form lines, grit, melancholy, and boundless optimism - as a quintessentially American art form. Moreover, an art form that brought white and African-American performers and listeners together in a celebration of the joy of music through some of the most virulent decades of racism of the last century. 

The series is not without its critics, many of whom found it overly ambitious and overly selective in the narratives included. Burns, himself not deeply musically inclined, initiated the project at the suggestion of famed trumpeter and jazz ambassador Wynton Marsalis, who became a driving force behind the production. Burns and his team would conduct vast amounts of archival research for the series, which featured Marsalis on camera as an expert commentator.