I was strolling east in Tompkins Square Park on a perfect autumn day, enjoying the sundappled urban vista in the heart of the Lower East Side, when I heard the lovely voice of a young woman. “My pussy is magic, my pussy is magic, my pussy is magical!” The leggy Jessica Delfino gestured toward her crotch, fetchingly attired in a violet-checked frock with glossy white pantyhose and vinyl gogo boots. Don’t you love that schoolgirl ’60s drag? Arrayed around stage, stretching back toward the green park benches and towering trees, were a motley crew of leather-jacketed punks, toddlers and teens, canines, nose-ringed feminists, Goths, arm-in-arm couples, downtown street denizens and people who looked suspiciously like artists.There was a scattering of Halloween-costumed freaks, mainly black-and-white-faced zombies and skeletons, ready for the Zombie Crawl later on.

Nothing like getting your freak out before the temperature nosedives. Halloween Freakfest, a free outdoor variety and punk show, was a good place to catch some rays, listen to some bands, people watch and bump into noxious friends you’ve been avoiding all year long. Even though the event was billed as a costume party, not too many of the lazy bastards showed up in costume, making my skimpy black rubber nurse outfit a mite conspicuous. Not that I cared. Guys along the route were begging me to take their temperature. Daniella La Bocca, one of the organizers, was wearing a tasteful tiara made out of bloody tampons. Performance artist Katrin Hier sported a fake beard and black stovepipe hat—normally a hottie, I barely recognized her. The event celebrates the neighborhood’s counter-culture scene, despite the invasion by encroaching yuppie scum and impersonal overpriced boutiques and mega-stores.

Although I sadly missed GLOB, live lady warriors wrestling in blood, I caught some kickass bands like Ghouls Night Out, an all-female Misfits cover band deftly blaring out some harddriving garage and horror punk.We all loved the chunky bearded bears in the Endangered Feces, a four-man punk band from Queens. They describe themselves as sounding like every toilet in Queens flushing simultaneously.

The Feces has a flair for poetry.Their lyrics to “John Bobbit’s Prayer” are fitting: “Now I lay me down to sleep, I pray my penis I will keep,And if I wake to find it gone, I hope I find it on the lawn.” Maybe they’d even find it proudly displayed on the scraggly crabgrass of Tompkins Square Park.