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.

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.

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.

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.