vanilla ice
[Photo via YouTube]

It looks like Vanilla Ice’s Fourth of July concert isn’t actually happening

Vanilla Ice was planning to perform in the Austin area over the July 4 weekend. Since the concert’s announcement, however, the rapper has faced scrutiny for promoting a seemingly non-social-distancing performance.

Now, it has been announced that the Texas show is canceled.

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As the coronavirus pandemic continues, various venues remain empty and shows are still canceled. For Vanilla Ice, however, he managed to find a loophole for his Fourth of July concert.

The show’s venue Emerald Point Bar & Grill is technically a restaurant even though it has a large outdoor concert space. Due to this loophole, attendees don’t have to listen to current recommended coronavirus guidelines that seek to eliminate large crowds.

On Thursday, the Travis County Health Department warned individuals to stay away from Vanilla Ice’s performance.

“[Attending a concert] is not wise regardless of who is performing at any gathering right now,” spokesperson Jen Samp says. “The best way to be nostalgic is by protecting your parents and grandparents and staying home.”

The concert was selling 2,500 tickets which is about half of the venue’s capacity. Tickets ranged from $25 for general admission to $300 for VIP seating. The VIP seating eventually sold out. However, all purchased tickets came with a warning to concert-goers.

“Please note any interaction with the general public poses an elevated risk of being exposed to COVID-19 and we cannot guarantee that you will not be exposed while in attendance at the event,” the warning says.

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Last Friday, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott ordered all the state’s bars to re-close due to a surge of COVID-19 cases. Texas also announced 8,076 new cases, a record daily high, despite tests being short in supply.

Following all of this, Vanilla Ice has finally announced that the show has been canceled. In the update video, he reveals he didn’t know the turn out for the show would be “so crazy.” He also says that the show was booked way in advance when predictions suggested the pandemic would be further contained.

“Basically, I’m not going,” he says. “I listened to my fans. I didn’t know the numbers were so crazy in Austin. But we were hoping that it would be better by the 4th of July because we booked this concert a long time ago. So basically we just want to stay safe. You know, we do take it serious. We were just hoping for a good time on the 4th of July weekend, but it turned into be a big focal point on me, and it’s not about that.”

Along with Vanilla Ice’s gig, Emerald Point Bar & Grill has also canceled an upcoming performance from Color Me Badd.

Vanilla Ice recently reminisced about the 1990s on social media. He shared a video from an old performance and said that he misses the days where we “didn’t have coronavirus or cell phones or computers.”

“I can’t wait to get back to this,” he says. “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.”

What do you think about Vanilla Ice canceling his concert over COVID-19 concerns? Let us know your thoughts in the comments below.