Please note that the quote in the title is out of context, but that Vanilla Ice did make it in an Instagram caption just this week. Last Friday, thanks to our eagle-eyed friends at Seriously? OMG! WTF? (they have fun coverage there, check them out), we reported on the story that Vanilla Ice was set to throw a concert over Fourth of July weekend. It’s scheduled at a bar Austin, TX where photos of the crowd at previous shows had already gone viral, and which management insisted complied with attendance requirements. Bars and concerts are superspreader events, we just heard about a bar in Michigan that led to at least 85 cases. (The fact that we don’t have contact tracing in America is just one miserable detail among so many massive failures controlling this virus.) As a result of the spike in cases in Texas, Governor Greg Abbott has ordered all bars closed – unless they sell food too. The bar where Vanilla Ice is set to play does have food, so there’s an exemption for that venue and he intends to go on with the show. Somehow Ice thinks it’s still the 90s, which explains a lot about his career. The Austin Chronicle points out that Ice made a recent Instagram post with a video of a crowded concert and wrote “I can’t wait to get back to this. The Nineties were the best. We didn’t have coronavirus.” Well we do have coronavirus now, it’s not the f’ing 90s anymore!
The massive, multi-level marina structure on Lake Travis is categorized as a restaurant because at least 51% of its sales are food and, while Abbott’s order shut down bars, it only reduced restaurant capacity to 50%. A couple other local venues, Stubb’s and the Far Out Lounge, also remain open because of their restaurant designation. According to an interview with Emerald Point general manager Matt Norcia in May, the business maintains a load card for 4,000 people but can scale up to 5,000 when they open the beach area.
The Independence Day Throwback Beach Party promoter, Mike Wade, told Chronicle reporter Rachel Rascoe via text that the show’s capacity will be 2,500. Tickets, selling on Eventbrite, range $25-$300.
Vanilla Ice, aka Dallas native Rob Van Winkle, leans heavily on celebration of Nineties throwback culture in his promotion. An Instagram post from earlier this week showed footage from a packed concert, along with the caption: “I can’t wait to get back to this. The Nineties were the best. We didn’t have coronavirus, or cell phones, or computers.” He goes on to call the era, “The last of the great decades.”
On July 4, fellow Nineties hit-makers Color Me Badd – best known for their single “I Want to Sex You Up” – are scheduled to perform at Emerald Point.
30 years ago HIV and AIDs were often deadly, and were taught that we had to have safe sex or we would die. Now we have to wear masks and socially distance, it’s so simple and yet so many people think that their basic rights are being infringed on by having to wear a mask and not get drunk at a club. Now that so many states are opening up again people are acting like idiots, large gatherings like this are happening, and the US has 52k new positive cases a day, over 8 TIMES more cases than the entire EU, which has a population over 1/3rd greater than ours. (See the graph below, I think I’m summarizing it accurately) It’s only going to get worse and it’s maddening. This idiocy by one-hit wonder Vanilla Ice and by Color Me Badd, f’ck those guys too, is going to haunt them for the rest of their lives. Vanilla Ice is now always going to be known as the douche who had a live in-person non-distanced concert during the pandemic.
The weekly update on the comparison between the EU and the US.
• The population of the US is 330 million.
• The population of the EU is 446 million.[The source is the @OurWorldInData-Data Explorer where you can also view deaths, tests and more https://t.co/2gCWV8bjjN] pic.twitter.com/5JR032KpJj
— Max Roser (@MaxCRoser) July 1, 2020
You miss the 90’s so the obvious answer to you is to hold an unnecessary concert in which you will ignore the fact that there is a pandemic raging through the country and bring a bunch of people together at a bar (in a state with a massive spike in COVID cases) to ignore safety regulations so you can relive your youth?
Okay, then.
Irresponsible? Yes. But I think the governor and mayor of this area are completely to blame for even allowing this to happen. If you don’t create or even enforce restrictions you’re going to get stupid situations like this.
Local leaders are to blame for sure, but the Governor of Texas has taken away local judges/mayors authority to enforce any stay at home orders or other closure orders the may exceed those he’s set for the entire state. I’m not sure where things stand in Austin now (they did have a stay at home order in effect into June), but here in Houston local leaders are really struggling to contain the virus, in no small part because of Abbott’s lack of leadership.
“… we didn’t have cell phones or computers…” he said, on Instagram. LOL. Douche.
and, actually, we DID have both in the 90s.
and house parties were not invented in the 90s, either. people were having house parties in the 1800s. MEGAdouche.
Right? You want to go back to the 90s, fine, but REALLY go back then.
Everyone who allows, attends, and promotes this should be ASHAMED of themselves.
Nothing about Vanilla Ice leads me to believe he’s capable of making anything *except* terrible, desperate has-been life choices. But WTF about the potential 5000 morons who are choosing attend this thing??
He’s probably thinking some idiots are so desperate to go to ANY concert right now, it’s his time to make a buck ! He’s a moron and so is anyone going to concerts during a pandemic. The future generations are going to read about the stupidity of humans during this time. It’s f*cking embarrassing.
FYI this is not accurate: “Governor Greg Abbott has ordered all bars closed – unless they sell food too. ”
It’s not about selling food. It’s about what percentage of your sales are food and which are alcohol. All bars that don’t sell food are closed right now because of the percentage rule. There’s quite a few establishments that are bars + restaraunt and they are able to remain open due to their food sale percentage.
For example just yesterday I noticed one of my favorite bar/restaraunts was still open so I looked it up. Any establishment in Texas that sells alcohol may remain open if their food sales account for 51% or more of their business.
Who the hell is paying to see Vanilla Ice in 2020?? Who’d even want to do it for free??
He must be having money issues. There’s a time where he wouldn’t even dare embrace this persona. I know he supposedly reconciled it and moved on at some point but this ain’t the time for it.
HAHHAHAHAHA!! I just checked…. only 84 tickets have been sold as of last night.
https://www.texastribune.org/2020/07/01/vanilla-ice-austin-concert/
I’m doing contact tracing in NY!
Thank you for your service, Dorothy.
He waxes nostalgic about the 90s because it was the last time he was relevant.
I loved the 90s. I wax nostalgic all the time. I enjoyed cell phones, especially after the switch from analog to digital. I was totally geeking out about computer transformations and new software. Coding in the 80s was a BITCH. Video games were finally in 3D!!! And dialing into the World Wide Web? My God, the possibilities. But I eyeroll people thinking any prior decade is worth stepping into a time machine. You can’t have my smart tech. You can’t have my online shopping, working, learning, reading, watching, streaming, creating, organizing, scheduling, planning, synching, gaming, et al. You can’t take my delivery. You certainly can’t roll back time on states’ weed legislation, wtf, are you high?
Just say you cash broke dude…
Damn…
This idiot
pubs and restaurants are reopening in England this weekend and I’m scared. Second wave incoming…. (obviously I won’t be in the pub). People will gather, not maintain distance and boom!
however, pubs opening trying to maintain distancing is a very different thing to what is happening here. this is stupidity. Let’s hope the people of Texas stay away for their own health and eardrums.
Douche. I’m in Florida and we more than 10,000 new cases reported in a DAY. It’s not a joke and anyone who goes out to a crowded place at this point is crazy.
Which is worse? Having to hear Vanilla Ice’s horrible music or the high potential of getting COVID? I’m glad I’ll never have to find out. I’m not sure who in their right mans would even go. But it is in Florida, so it will probably be packed. *Sigh*
Kinda my thought. Who would honestly risk their life and health for Vanilla Ice?
Imagine having to admit that you got COVID from a vanilla ice concert. How embarrassing.
That’s right, no we didn’t have it 30 years ago because it didn’t exist.
What a putz.
Yeah. And we living on the 21 century really do not need to have Vanilla Ice.
He just cancelled it. Word to your mutha.
Well, he is an idiot. But the good news is that there should only be 12 people who actually show up so they can social distance as they sing Ice Ice baby