​Of all our native sons and daughters, Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta is--rightly or wrongly--among the most unloved. Born in New York, a veteran of not just the Upper East Side's Convent of the Sacred Heart but also NYU and countless open mic nights at dives like the Cutting Room, the 24-year-old tattooed lady we now know as Lady Gaga once wrote in her yearbook that her life's ambition was to play Madison Square Garden. She's done that now. But none of her accomplishments have meant much downtown, where the Parkside Lounge recently took the bold step of banning her music entirely from their jukebox:

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No, dudebro, Bernd Naber will not give you a ride home from the Shank in his awesome old convertible.

"It sounds like a tin shed in there," grouses a well-dressed couple walking briskly away from the Shank at five am this past Sunday. "The speakers are bad. Every room is half empty!"

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Here we go again. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne.

​To say that Drake's June 15th free, outdoor show at the South Street Seaport was cancelled would be an understatement--more like dissolved into a lawless riot. The cops eventually broke that show and the twenty-plus thousand people who came to see it up; after that, there were endless rounds of recrimination, blame, and most ominously, rumblings that future free outdoor shows in New York were in jeopardy. That turned out not to be the case. Except, that is, for Drake himself, who just had another NYC concert cancelled. Reports the New York Daily News:

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Aftermath of a free Drake concert. Photo by Rebecca Smeyne

​It was inevitable that the city of New York would begin to crack down on the plethora of free, sometimes anarchic summer shows around the five boroughs after Tuesday's Drake concert degenerated into a near riot. Now we have the first official summer casualty: a secret free Jay-Z performance slated for Monday. The rapper had planned to stage a surprise show on top of the marquee at the Ed Sullivan Theater, pegged to a performance on Letterman that night. But, as the New York Post is reporting, after "weeks of planning and negotiations," the permits for the show were suddenly pulled. "There was discussion of a concert, and ultimately it was decided there would be no permit," said a spokeswoman for Bloomberg's Office of Film, Theatre and Broadcasting.

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OK then. Credit.

​I wanted to go see power-pop deities the Buzzcocks at Irving Plaza last night, but unfortunately I had to watch some butt-licking basketball team deep-six professional sports in Cleveland for the next several decades, so. Seems like it was a great show, even with the bomb scare.

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​So the city is trying to shut down clubs for smoking violations, going to far as to unleash the deadly narc hipsters onto the town's various exclusive bars and clubs to enforce the law. Chief among the violators is M2 Ultralounge, currently fighting for their life in New York courtroom, and the establishment is clearly running scared. "Not even Snoop Dogg is immune to the city's crackdown on smoking in nightclubs," reports Page Six. "The rapper, known for his affinity for funny-smelling tobacco, lit a cigarette inside M2 nightclub Saturday night. Owner Joey Morrissey rushed over to tell him to put it out. 'But it's just a cigarette,' Dogg responded. He put out the smoke but remained rather subdued until he and his entourage left around 4:30 a.m. 'Normally he would get on the mike and rap, but he seemed depressed all night because he couldn't smoke,' said a witness." Welcome to the New New York, Calvin, where even regular cigarettes constitute a crime, and a dude who looks just like Mark Ronson might betray you and the club you're in to the health department. [NYP]

​Because it's called "Heat," see? Fresh off of taking the Grammys by military force on Sunday night, Beyonce will run up on innocent little Union Square Park tonight, "flickering projections of flames, steam and fog" in tow, by way of launching her new fragrance line. All this noise will be emanating from 15 Union Square, site of the original Tiffany's and the spot from which the sales pitch will both originate and then culminate with the star herself "appearing out of the advertising," whatever that means. Like in DeLillo, maybe, or The Science of Sleep. There's an afterparty too, where Solange will be DJing and big Jay-Z will be in the building. But you're not invited to that one, just the freezing cold part outside, with the flames. [WWD]

​On Sunday, the British-born local DJ Solange Raulston, better known around Brooklyn as DJ Reverend Soul, was killed riding her bike at the intersection of Nassau Avenue and McGuinness Boulevard. That spot was the site of 34 accidents involving bicyclists or pedestrians and two fatalities in the years spanning 1995 and 2005, according to the area's Neighbors Allied for Good Growth (NAG), "making it the most dangerous intersection in North Brooklyn." Now, NAG and Transportation Alternatives are using Raulston's death as a rallying cry for reform:

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http://www.flickr.com/photos/animalvegetable/ / CC BY-NC-SA 2.0

The N8 space, back in its Supreme Trading days.

Two weeks ago, a press blast announced that Annie would be DJing N8 this Thursday night, but if there's some sort of Williamsburg-bartender betting pool regarding the chances of this actually happening, don't waste a penny on it. For one, the North 8th space that was formerly Supreme Trading had an official City Ordinance on the front door as of Saturday afternoon. For two, N8's phone number is currently disconnected. For three, the date is no longer on the Norwegian-pop singer's official MySpace page. And coincidentally, Annie is now slated to spin vinyl at the Tribeca Grand this Saturday night, on a bill that includes a live performance from our homies Boy Crisis. (RSVP here.) The bigger question, then: will N8, which had been quietly hosting dance parties over the last few months, ever open again?

Download: Annie, "My Love Is Better" (Sunkh Knight remix)

​The wretched irony of it being Elevator Safety Week in New York right now--a fact nobody bothered to tell the city's own building inspectors, apparently--gets just a little bit worse today with the introduction of Safe-T Rider, a bewhiskered fox who raps like a self-loathing and subtitled Chuck D. How tone deaf is this whole campaign, exactly? Suffice to say at one point, Safe-T Rider is actually animated falling down an elevator shaft. The levels of obliviousness here are many and appalling. [Gothamist]