UPDATED: The Plight of a Winter Playbill | Playbill

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Inside Track UPDATED: The Plight of a Winter Playbill UPDATE: The buses are gone, so it looks like, the show will go on without a hitch for Playbill! We are thankful to the MTA that they heard our cries and rectified the problem. We're hoping for our neighbor's sake that the rest of Queens, and the outer boroughs, is getting rescued too!


For 126 years, our magazine, the Playbill, has somehow, some way, made its way into theatres every night.  On Dec. 28, for the first time, it looked as though our streak of getting theatres safely stocked with Playbills was going to be shattered due to a handful of city buses abandoned by the MTA outside of our printing plant in Woodside, Queens. In the aftermath of the Dec. 26-27 blizzard, cars were also left abandoned by motorists because the streets have yet to be plowed, leaving us here at Playbill scratching our heads thinking: Is Queens the forgotten borough?

Well, fear not theatregoers! You’ll have your Playbills, thanks to our dedicated men carrying boxes of books on handtrucks. What a mess! But how could we let a 126-year streak go down the drain?

On a serious note, our Playbill trucks — you may have seen them out and about around the city every day, dutifully delivering books to theatres — are about the same size as an ambulance, and if we can't get through, more likely than not, it means they can't get through. More important than a theatergoer not having a Playbill (which, trust me, is a huge deal to us), are the thousands of people stranded on impassable roads in the outer boroughs. Woodside’s 61st Street (where our printing plant resides) is not a dumping ground for city buses, nor should it be left neglected, piled up with drifts of snow waiting to be plowed. We love our home in Queens. It’s brought lots of joy to theatre lovers everywhere by printing millions of Playbills all these years. And for tonight, those theatergoers will get those Playbills.  Hopefully, for our sake and the sake of the other residents of Queens, the city will hear our cries and get those buses and cars out of the streets.

As for tomorrow's deliveries? As Annie sings, "it's only a day away."

[caption id="attachment_3269" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="Playbill's printing plant on the left — in front is an abandoned bus and a car"]The Playbill printing plant on the left — in front is another abandoned bus and a car[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_3265" align="aligncenter" width="300" caption="It's not every day that a city bus gets left stranded in the middle of an intersection! "]It's not everyday that a city bus gets left abandoned in the middle of an intersection! [/caption]

 
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