While Tompkins Square Park was the main venue for the HOWL! Festival last weekend, St. Mark’s Church in the Bowery on E. 10th St. also saw plenty of action. On Friday night, the Squatter Festival had punk bands and poetry in the church’s historic graveyard — the city’s oldest burial ground — where some dancers could be seen on top of the ancient sandstone Winthrop family vault, with its brass cross, above, and other marble burial vault markers. On Saturday night, Hip-Hop HOWL! at St. Mark’s hosted some new school hip-hoppers at an event organized by Charlie Ahearn, now of Tribeca, whose trailblazing movie “Wild Style” offered the first look at rappers like Grand Master Flash and graffiti artists like Lee Quinones. At left, Ahearn posed with P-Star, a pigtailed 9-year-old hip-hopper of Puerto Rican/Cuban descent who is ready to “blow up,” as in become a major act. Below, a statue of Peter Stuyvesant, who is buried in the graveyard of the Episcopal church, which was once his family chapel, looked down on the scene at St. Mark’s.
