Vanilla Ice is back with a brand new concert and this time, fans aren’t appreciating the throwback. On June 24, the 52-year-old “Ice Ice Baby” rapper announced that he’ll be performing at the “Independence Day Throwback Beach Party” at the Emerald Point Bar & Grill in Austin, Texas — one of the four states with the most reported coronavirus cases in the United States. “Get ready to go back to The 90s, the greatest decade ever. Bring your dancin shoes, Speedo’s, bikinis, neon colors and and ninja turtle gear… hahha,” Ice wrote under the concert poster, seemingly oblivious to the pandemic that has claimed the lives of more than 2,000 lives in Texas.
https://www.instagram.com/p/CB1L7gJJuCZ/
The venue is on the shore of Lake Travis, and is selling up to 2,500 tickets (priced between $25-$300), the Austin Chronicle reported. With the potential of 2,500 people packed shoulder-to-shoulder, people weren’t too thrilled to hear about Ice’s upcoming gig once it started trending on July 1. On that same day, the Texas Department of State Health Services reported 8,076 new coronavirus cases — a new single-day record for the virus hot spot.
if you’re trying to risk getting COVID just to see Vanilla Ice my DMs are open. no story, i just wanna talk. https://t.co/eXW89ABgxI
— Dom DiFurio🌟 (@DomDiFurio) July 1, 2020
“Imagine dying of the coronavirus because you went to a f–king Vanilla Ice concert,” writer Eric Francisco tweeted, while another person wrote, “If you get COVID because you went to the Vanilla Ice concert that somehow is the exception to closure rules, frankly, you deserve that.” Fans believe Ice couldn’t read the room, considering that the state’s governor Greg Abbott just ordered all bars to be closed and reduced restaurant capacity to 50 percent on June 26.
Vanilla Ice is dumb af pic.twitter.com/ceQrvf1Yv3
— 🇺🇸✊✊🏽✊🏿🇺🇸 (@blakebenett) July 2, 2020
“Vanilla Ice is trending because he is throwing a concert in Texas for the 4th of July. If you go to this concert and catch COVID, don’t ask anyone to stop, collaborate, and listen to your dumba–,” another fan tweeted, and another person mirrored that frustration: “Imagine having to go on a ventilator bc you just had to see Vanilla Ice.”
Meanwhile, Ice seems more preoccupied with the ’90s. On June 28, he shared a throwback clip from a packed concert and wrote, “I can’t wait to get back to this. The 90s were the best. We didn’t have coronavirus, or cell phones, or computers. we had 5.0‘s, blockbuster, Beavis and Butthead, Wayne’s world, Chris Tucker and Jackie Chan. And Mortal Kombat is still better than fortnight but we got out of the house, We danced, we invented house parties in the 90s. The last of the great decades #IMissThenineties.”