Luckily, other institutions knew what to do with these plays. Lincoln Center produced Nick's play The Coward, in 2010, under the auspices of their new-plays-by-new-playwrights venture. Set in 18th-century England, the play follows the misadventures of a falsettoed coward unwisely committed to a duel. Next Tuesday, January 17th, Joe's Pub will host a staged reading of Nick's latest project, Grizzly Adams, a musical performed by bears which he's writing with the musician Corn Mo. We spoke by phone.

Jaime Green: So how are rehearsals going?

Nick Jones: We had our first read-through on Sunday with the whole cast and with songs, playing through everything. I had rewritten the second act based on a sort of notion I had. There’re a lot of historical figures who show up in the play, and I found out about another animal tamer who worked around the same time, who ended up inheriting Grizzly Adams’ animal menagerie when he died, and who also started out as a shoemaker, like him. There’s all this amazing, weird history that I can’t resist. So I wrote in this new character and a monkey. I was pretty convinced that I had ruined the second act—there’s only so much you can fit into one play—but it seemed to go really well.

How does doing a performance at Joe’s Pub fit into the development trajectory of a piece that’s still in process?

Well, that’s a thing I want to do more of. I worked through Jollyship for years, in all its different iterations, which I think ended up being really useful because we developed our language for the theater that we were making, and we became very good at knowing what would land show to show. It became very easy to create a show that would work. Whereas with some of the other play experiences I’ve had, you work for three weeks in a closed room and then you unveil it, and you’re like, let’s see what happens! And in some cases it’s hundreds of thousands of dollars—or, on a Broadway show, millions of dollars—and it's we’ve all just been in closed rooms, but let’s hope for the best. Why not just do a soft opening? No one’s really paying attention. It’s not going to create bad hype about the show. And I just like the idea of developing a show in front of audiences. It’s more fun, and the pressure we put on ourselves to get the show together for a performance in front of a paying audience is much greater than the last day of a three- to seven-day workshop or whatever. I mean, the show is done now. It’s gonna change, but we have a musical now. And we didn’t have one a few weeks ago.

You had a… not your traditional playwright coming-up experience, right? You were working in circus and puppetry and other… weirder, nonstandard theatrical things?

Yeah, yeah, but I mean, I decided I wanted to be a playwright when I was in college. I had a very loose definition of what that was. I was writing plays that were actually inspired by spoken word poetry and were more performance art than stories with narratives. So then when I came to the city I couldn’t for some years really figure out how to do what I had done in college, and it was during that time that I was working in the circus – helping out with the circus, rather. Raja [Azar, co-creator and bandleader of Jollyship] and we did some puppet shows that people liked, so that was just a foot-hold, of, oh, this is something we can do and develop, and so we did. But I didn't manage to get a non-Jollyship play up anywhere before 2007. I was doing more music and variety arts related things for my first five years in the city.

Were you seeing a lot of plays?

I was not seeing a lot of plays.

Do you see a lot of plays now?

Now I see a lot of plays. I see plays every week, and I think, what was I doing for five years? But no, no regrets.

I thought it was interesting, after your success with Jollyship, all the attention you got for this brilliant, strange thing, that I heard a little while later that you were at Juilliard. Was that about your craft as a writer, or was it a step toward productions and getting people to say, “oh, he’s the pirate puppet rock guy, but he’s at Juilliard”? Or was it about changing how you write?

I mean, why not go? It’s a great, prestigious program. That’s reason enough. I guess I did want to establish myself as someone who could do more than a puppet show. I always thought Jollyship was a particular project, not What I Did, so I did write a couple of things consciously trying to write straight plays. Now I’m sort of more at peace with myself.

If there’s any method to what I do, or the ideas that are appealing to me, I want to do shows that are based on ideas that would be easily be rejected, and it gives me great pride to try to succeed to create a show with bad ideas that transcend the stupidity of themselves. It’s not that formulated; I am actually just writing about the things I’m interested in, but I have very high standards for them, and I do want them to be appealing to as large a group of people as possible, but the seeds of the ideas have nothing to do with the themes or politics that are appealing to most mainstream older white audiences.

Speaking of themes or messages, how did you end up writing a musical about Grizzly Adams? Was it the interest in the historical story, or is it a parable? Are there themes in it, or were you just like, "Grizzly Adams was awesome and insane, I want to write a musical about him?"

Well, I was talking to Corn Mo, the composer, who I actually know from those days working with the circus people, because he’s a circus person—I've known him for ten years, and he’s a great, great musician and I think in a lot of ways he’s a great inspiration to me (and Jollyship—I think he basically taught Raja to play the accordion) and we had been talking about Grizzly Adams. I don’t remember what it started with. I think originally it was going to be a story about Grizzly Adams working for Barnum, and Barnum accidentally opens up a portal to hell and with some ancient relic, and some children who were there for a children's performance get sucked into hell, and Barnum tells Grizzly Adams to go into hell after the children, and there was this whole descent-into-the-underworld thing, with Grizzly Adams wrestling demons. I think that was the paragraph that was the seed of it. But then I started reading about Grizzly Adams, and his life is so insane, the actual facts of his life are much crazier than that.

One thing that was very useful and nice about Jollyship was that the band had a narrative double function as the crew of the ship. There was a nice metaphor there. When the crew was mutinying you also sort of realized that it was a band not getting along. In a very relatable, fantastical way, it brought it down to earth. And with this, the idea that we came upon was that Grizzly Adams could have a band of bears, similarly. And we had a model to work from, with the Country Bear Jamboree show, in Disneyland, which is a bunch of animatronic bears that play country music. I think it’s always nice to have a form to subvert. It’s a way to make the thing seem familiar, yet also exciting at the same time, because you realize that it’s not what it pretends to be.

Anyway, the idea is that it’s like the Country Bear Jamboree, except these bears, in the final incarnation, are gonna look like real, realistic grizzly bears, and they’re not going to speak, and they’re going to go out of control a lot, during the musical numbers. Almost right from the start, the bears go out of control and are attacking Grizzly Adams.

My last question was going to be about bears, because The Awl is kind of obsessed with bears. Any final thoughts on bears?

Well, I’ll give you an anecdote that I love. When Grizzly Adams showed up in New York City, he rode down the Bowery on the backs of his bears.

I wanted all of the musicians in the show to have beards, but I don't think that’s going to happen. But there are going to be a lot of beards on stage.

Interview condensed, edited and lightly reordered.

Jaime Green hopes you'll still take her seriously with as much as she loves puppets.

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WNS started in May of 1996 as Blade Night Manhattan, and switched to its current name in 2001. Mocha got involved the next year and, "because I'm a control freak" started organizing more and more, until by 2005 he was leading the group. On a clear night, the group can draw up to 100 skaters, looping around the city together on a 9- to 12-mile variable route that starts at Union Square and ends back at Mumbles, a "skater-friendly" bar on 17th Street and Third Avenue that lets the group keep blades on indoors.

The plan the other night was to do a skate through the South Street Seaport, a route that ended up being a full downtown circuit: Down the Hudson River Greenway, the Battery Park Terrace, around the Seaport, through Chinatown, up the LES. Members start gathering around 7:30 p.m., some blading over, others identifiable by skates swinging from their bags, all in fantastic shape. There's Brielle, who had a hot-pink wrist cast (biking accident! "I don't fall on skates") to match her athletic gear. Seth, also known as DJ Rolls, wore a stereo strapped to his waist. He gave the skate its soundtrack ("mostly reggae, rap and rock, but I do take requests"). He's considering making a website and offering his services for bar/t mitzvahs on wheels.

And Tim was there with Ryoda, who he introduced to WNS after the two met in Japan. There's Erica, who tries to bring a new friend every week. There was Lars, fresh from a three-hour drive from his home in Delaware, a commute he makes for about 3/4 of the season's Wednesdays. His eight-year-old, Dalton, was zipping around between park-goers, practicing skating on his knees and filming it all with a camera mounted on his helmet. "I have no clue when I started," he said. "Three," his dad said. "He had Scooby Doo quad skates."

A few minutes after 8 p.m., Mocha got everyone's attention and ran through the rules: Shout out obstacles! Stay in one lane! Stop for red lights! There are usually between three and eight staff members on a skate. Sonic and Rich are staffing in red shirts; Rich and Mocha met through WNS, and are now, per Mocha, "like brothers!" Rich has been staffing skates for a few years, and said that while the crowds are usually forgiving, cabbies can get angry. "They cut us off, sometimes even swerve at us to try and get us out of their lane—so crazy! Swerving at a group of people. But I think for this many people we need a permit or something—we end up stretching out as long as a few semis—so we try to obey the rules and minimize our traffic presence."

On New York City streets, skaters are governed by the same set of rules as bikers—they must act like a car, or in places where there are designated bike/skate lanes, stick to them. Skaters' specific traffic law-inclusion came in January of 1996, and it was a victory: Many states don't give skaters particular street rights. But for WNS, there is one snag: According to Article 34 of the state traffic law, "Persons... gliding on in-line skates upon a roadway shall not ride more than two abreast... [and when passing a vehicle shall ride]... single file." Though the WNSkaters try to stay unobtrusive, when they're on the street, they frequently take over a full lane. The group has never had a problem with the cops, but as Rich put it, "the less trouble we cause, the better."

Because the skate's not totally legal, there's a tension between how to attract more skaters and still keep it underground. Mocha's efforts have given the group a strong social media and web presence, and some of the skaters pass out fliers en route, but the consensus is that a lot of extra effort is unnecessary: The skate itself, 50-100 people on inline skates, seizing a right shoulder and following it the length of the city, is the group's best advertising.

The reactions are incredible: A dog walker, grin on his face and five dogs at his heels, snapped a phone-shot of our blinking red tail lights. Groups of boys ran along with us for a block, handing out high-fives. Along the Battery Park Terrace, a kid jumped up and down on a docked yacht, waving. A few miles later, in Chinatown, two boys did the same on the hood of a car. We got shouts of, "Roller gang, coming through!," of "What is this?," "How can I join?," "Flash mob!," "Only in New York."

The skaters love the response, but also say they like the friends, the work-out, the views of the city. One skater, Phil, said, "I've learned more about New York doing this than most New Yorkers." Lars, the Delaware commuter, swears skating's the best exercise: "Runners at 60? That's hell on your knees. This is low-impact and great for your butt, legs." All the skating enthusiasm means that many in the group try to get out on blades as much as possible: Though Wednesday's event is the biggest and best-organized, there's some sort of social skate almost every day of the week, from Tuesday's smaller, more advanced group to Thursday's Central Park beginner session.

About two hours after we left Union Square, the skate came to an end at Mumbles. Some waited outside for ice water, but the more central crew skated right in and up to the bar, celebrating nine miles with beers and burgers. The bartender, Norma, always has the Wednesday night shift. "I love them," she said. "They keep me on my toes."

Once everyone has a few beers down, I ask if they ever feel like hold-outs from the 90s. The group is mixed: There are a few strong nos, but Mocha, for one, votes yes. "I think most people do," he said. A Times piece on the skate from 1998, when it still was still Blade Night Manhattan, described the skaters as a group of hormonal 20-somethings; now, the majority are over 35, and the store Blades, the skate's original namesake, is now the only specialty skate shop left in the city.

The conversation broke up when someone slipped on his skates, and, four hours after meeting in Union Square, the skaters started shuffling home. The next day, photos from the night are up on the WNS Facebook page; tonight, they'll do it again.

Olivia LaVecchia needs some practice.

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The second thing you need to know is that, in contrast to the hamlet that gives it a mailing address, a trip with the Delaware River Tubing Company is not a quaint affair. To approach it on one of the blistering days that have afflicted the lower 48 states of late is akin to rolling up to a firebase or a refugee camp.

Immediately visible is an endless flow of school buses coursing through the company HQ, plopped in the parking lot of a roller rink. So is a large crowd (or rather, an assemblage of crowds) that, upon closer examination, show themselves to be sweaty, confused and polyglot. Among the babel were both the North and South Jersey dialects, as well as Spanish and Arabic. There was what appeared to be a heat-resistant Indian family draped in traditional clothing marching towards the vast stacks of vessels, speaking a language unidentifiable to my Hindi- and Gujarati-speaking wife.

Those buses transport the customers to a designated launching spot on the Delaware, where all will begin their four-hour glide. That much is clear, but instructions on how to inject oneself into the river fun are not plentiful, as my wife and I learned on a recent broiling Sunday. We made the 90-minute drive from New York after due diligence demonstrated without question that if one is going to go tubing in the metro area, Frenchtown is the place to be.

We asked a few question of one of the longhaired collegiate types that, along with the closer-cropped never-gonna-be-able-to-retire types, fill out the staff. That got us to the shed where $64 dollars got us two tubes, or donuts. We declined upgrades that might have gotten us a tube with back support or paddles. There’s no real guidance on how to choose the tubes; you just see which fits your ass. We also received two wristbands, one for transportation, the other for a “BBQ meal.” (On this day, heavy tubing demand meant that they were out of their usual meal wristbands. Ordinary rubber bands were being used—and thin ones at that!)

Before you get to the food, however, you have to get to the water. That journey involves a short ride on one of those school buses that seemed to reconfigured expressly for the transporting of tubers (those who ride inner tubes, not tubers). The seats don’t face front, but rather each other, creating a wide enough aisle to accomodate the rafts. There are two drawbacks to this otherwise genius design:

1. How to use this system wasn’t communicated clearly in all cases and, in the cases when it was, the rider often either a. Didn’t understand or b. Disregarded the instructions.

2.The infiltration of non-tubular vessels, including elephantine rafts that require long paddles and a sort of bastardized kayak that, as far as I’m concerned, should be outlawed.

The all-too-common effect was to create a pile of tubes, rafts and kayaks, wasting space and time and, well, what else is there? Adding even a minute to vacation bus trips is never welcomed. The confined space, plus the seating arrangement, plus the preponderance of Northeastern skin on display, but in the shade, and therefore minus the glaring summer sun that serves as a much-needed blinding agent in most flesh-baring contexts, made for a rather grotesque equation. Sure, there was the body hair, but more alarming was the volume of moles whose size, color and fearful asymmetry screamed out for dermatological exam.

But this doesn’t last long. After a short, not-very-bouncy ride, it’s a quick, somewhat scary scramble down some muddy sandbags and, bang, you’re in the Delaware River.

Now what?

For many of you, tubing—or “toobing”—probably conjures Mountain Dew-fueled, hyper-adrenalized attacks on the rivers wild put in place by God only so you could motherfuck them into submission. But its origins are genteel. Tubing received media attention when Princess Panthip Chumbhot of Nagar Svarga invited close friends to her estate for inner tube trips down the Chong Lom. Smashing into rocks or drowning wasn’t the main danger, as a Sports Illustrated article from the time tells us: “A murderous bandit chieftain named Tiger Sangat has set up headquarters in a far corner of her acres, which makes it necessary for two armed guards to keep the princess company wherever she goes. For them it is often a pleasantly cool duty.” Realizing she was on to something, she started charging regular folk five baht a ride.

Princess Panthip Chumbhot would likely be proud of what Delaware Tubing Company has made of an enterprise that probably yielded some nice pocket change for her. With buses departing roughly every five minutes, the operation dumps New Jerseyans into the water with a brio that Tony Soprano might appreciate. The downside of injecting yourself into that sort of volume is that any hopes for a quiet journey of water-born reflection are dashed in the early minutes. The pink, blue and yellow of other people’s tubes are everywhere—touching you, even. The river is not wide; there’s not a lot of room to escape the schools of tubers. Big extended families or unnaturally expansive packs of friends float together, often tethered by rope. Their conversations, often just giddy call-and-responses of bad river-themed jokes, were very much audible and very much awful.

One fellow got our trip off to a Biblical start, screaming for no apparent reason, “Let there be light…”

“And God said let there be light and there was light,” someone else on the river corrected him in surprisingly accurate but not particularly devout fashion.

“….and hot dogs. And malt liquor,” finished the first.

For all the talk about alcohol, there’s less drunkenness than you’d expect. There is a fair amount of friends and family being loudly rude to each other, calling each other “dirtbags” and what not. A “Roseanne” script it is not. While we waited in line for the wristbands, a teenaged girl asked her father if their brood should tether their tubes. “Neh, I wouldn’t mind if I lost you,” he said, patting his belly and looking around for some sort of approval.

It’s also worth noting that the whole area is quite clean, perhaps due to the trash-fetching dog named Peace, described by Delaware River Tubing, Inc. CEO Greg Crance in this TV interview.

After the impromptu Genesis reading, I was struck by the feeling that this racket might get tireseome over the 3.5 to 4 hours it takes to travel to the bus pick-up point. As I flopped backward onto my tube, with the hazy sky gnawing at my SPF 50, the river slow and tepid like a warm bath, the dolts screaming, a question arrived: Is there anyway out of this? There really is not. As my wife pointed out—frequently and for no certain reason—a health emergency probably wouldn’t receive quick treatment. (She also pointed out regurlarly and perhaps significantly that there are no bathrooms.)

After a while it took a turn for the better. That'd be when the strains of “Every Rose Has Its Thorn” could be heard, followed by “Jump,” emanating from the stereo of some kids hanging out on the river’s little islands. Being from Jersey means it's likely hat certain things in your blood, among them the chemical ingredients of a plastic bottle and an appreciations for tomatoes, corn, blueberries, and hot dogs and hamburgers or, indeed, “hamburgs,” cooked outside on a grill, and classic or even “cock” rock. Any of those things will often make an otherwise shitty situation seem just grand and the combination of any two or can act like a shot of B12. So Poison giving way to Van Halen, just as signs for the “World Famous Hot Dog Man” appeared, worked in concert to turn this jammy around.

The "Famous River Hot Dog Man" and his presenting company are proud not only of the meal, but the meal’s girth. The wristband does not just get you a crummy hot dog; it gets you two hot dogs, a bag of chips or a frozen candy bar and a soft drink served in an unironic styrofoam cup. You can also sub out the dogs for a cheeseburger, as we did, in tribute to the company’s second slogan, “Where the Customer is King.” Upgrades are possible here if you want a veggie burger or chicken breast sandwich and don’t mind forking over a few dollars. And it’s ok if your money is wet, a sign tells you. We decided not to sit on the partially submerged picnic tables that comprise the island’s dining areas, because that would be weird.

The burgers are typical Jersey fare—tightly-packed, well-cooked patties slapped with a slice of American cheese—with a yumminess multiplied by being outside, on an island, in the middle of a river. The island is actually owned by the Delaware River Tubing Company, purchased in a visionary moment years ago.

Bellies full, we began the second part of our journey, which unfurled in a sort of unpeaceful peace. The trees on the banks form a membrane just thick enough to block out the sight of passing cars, if not their sounds, and a few small hills on the Jersey side break up the flat monotony. The not-terribly-swift current is broken up only by teeny rapids that give you a bounce or two. It’s comparatively exhilarating. There were other moments of excitement: a vaguely maniacal looking snorkeler muttering to himself, a powerboat zipping upriver, a few errant tubes with their owners trailing them furiously.

But, to be clear, you spend most of your time floating with a slowness that puts the mind on a current of its own. I couldn’t help but wonder what George Washington, who pulled off a river crossing just south of where we were to mount a surprise attack on some snoozing Hessians in Trenton, would think if he saw the long armada of tubers. His Delaware was icy and treacherous and his America knew nothing of “Proud to Serve” tattoos blurry on back fat or floating coolers festooned with the N.Y. Giants logo, our contemporary bric-a-brac of freedom. The revolutionary in him might flash his dentures at the thought of the endless ribbon of commonfolk marring the backyard views of the multimillion-dollar manses perched on the Pennsylvania side—one with what looked like a treehouse bigger than our apartment.

Or what would Elizabeth Gilbert think? Had she and she and Jose ever shuttered Two Buttons on a Saturday just to take this decidedly downmarket journey? If we read the Bali—or "pray"—section of her opus as the emotional synthesis of Italian gorging and Indian asceticism, is a tubing jaunt down the brown waters of the Delaware not merely an extension of the dialectic, and a more affordable one at that? Remember when Richard, addressing her as “Groceries,” told her, “Life didn't go your way for once. And nothing pisses off a control freak more than life not goin' her way.” Tubing is all about giving up control. You’ve surrendered your gadgets, your afternoon and any control over your direction. There is one drop-off point and one pick-up point and between, there is only the tube. You have little say over who’s around you.

You submit yourself to the current until the end. We washed up at another set of sandbag steps and filed up them, along with another few dozen disgorged tubers. The bus we took back to the roller rink was even more disorganized. It was dominated by a single family that chattered happily in Arabic and, flouting all relevant design principles, made an unruly pile of their vessels. The patriarch wore a Phillies cap, its maroon “P” the only thing that signified to us, besides their breathy repetitions of "insha'Allah."

Matthew Creamer has lost to IBM's Watson, survived a chemical weapons incinerator, gotten to the bottom of an urban legend in Alabama, and made it in and out of both Cuba and NYU legally. He is an editor at large at Ad Age and can be found on Twitter.

Vintage Delaware tubing photos by Joe Shlabotnik, from Flickr.

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• Or? Tonight, on the Intrepid, they are playing The Goonies at sunset. (Warning: NO ALCOHOL ALLOWED, it's a, you know, battleship/museum.) BUT BEST OF ALL? The midnight movie at the Landmark Sunshine this weekend is Mortal Kombat. Boom! And in art, there's a weirdo group show opening tonight at Maccarone in the West Village.

• In local film, Septien plays at the IFC—the only film there classified as "Comedy/Drama/Horror." Nationally, uh... the only big movie opening is Zookeeper? Oh and Horrible Bosses. Maybe you should just stay home and get your Google Circles all lined up? Gosh, what a strange weekend this is! Is there anything better to do? LET US KNOW. We'll be at home, staring at the wall.

Recommended reads for your downtime:

• Some Cures for the Hiccups
• How to Spend $1 Million at Tiffany (it's easy!)
•A Photo Tribute to the Hot Folks of NYC!
• A Handy Guide to How (Not) to Work with the Kids of the Famous
• The Age-Old Question: Which Failed Utopia was Best?

Photo by Andrew Piccone, from the series A Day in New York

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• Warning: Sunday is gay pride. Don't go west of Broadway. Upside: that means tonight is the drag march. Starts at 7 p.m., Tompkins Square Park.

• Tonight Bob Mould plays at the Highline Ballroom! Have you read his book yet? He's on tour—reading tour—across (parts!) of the country. (Related: Pat Benatar is also on tour—music tour—and is playing in Jersey on Saturday!)

• And tonight "Perfectly Damaged" opens at Derek Eller Gallery—artwork that's been "kicked, dragged, cut, burnt, melted, sprayed, shot, and tossed in a blender."

• Did you know Housing Works is having an online summer sale?

• "From 1937 to 1941, 'Pins & Needles' was a hit musical comedy revue running on Broadway. But this was no ordinary Broadway musical: it was written for and performed by members of The International Ladies Garment Workers’ Union." The just-opened revival "is a joint endeavor of the Obie-winning Foundry Theater and Families United for Racial and Economic Equality."

• On Saturday, at 1 p.m.... "Cowgirl Cowhunt is a 90-minute strategic hide-and-seek variant set in 1919 that casts players as historically important cowgirls, rustlers or cattle, each competing head-to-head to be Queen of the Range." For real.

• Or you can also stay home and read about Julie Taymor's "Spiderman" disaster, the burning love of Bon Iver, the world's best dinosaur TV show, how books really get their titles and what is up with all those bees. Just don't fly anywhere.

Photo by Guian Bolisay

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• Gloria is the midnight movie at IFC this weekend!

• Ryan Trecartin at PS1 on Sunday. (All the art gays in one place!)

• I will totally watch "TNT's non-groundbreaking but absorbing" new alien show, "Falling Skies," on Sunday.

• It is the Northside Festival in Brooklyniamsburgpoint if you like music and festivities and lots of them. (Yacht is playing Sunday and everyone seems excited.)

• And a kooky group show opens at the gallery called Canada on Sunday. It's about... human progress?

• Also New Yorkers should note that there will be fireworks on Saturday night on the East River, on the southern end, and that the 4th of July fireworks are not going to be on the East River again this year, which is stupid, because, New Jersey, whatever, so the point being, enjoy these east-side fireworks while you can.

• If you wanted to just stay home and read—PS! Are there any good new books? Please let us know!—we recommend:

• Brooklyn's Philly Pinoy, AKA the Restaurant with the Cruise Ship Out Front.
• Some very real words from a lesbian blogger.
• Things that make Jews angry!
• The trouble with the Internet and your mind.
• Great reasons to hold your nose and vote.

And if you just like smoking, here's how much you'll pay by state. Get cracking on your import/export biz.

Photo by Ryan Vaarsi

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