Vanilla Ice to perform Fourth of July weekend concert near Austin as coronavirus cases surge

As coronavirus instances continue on to surge in Texas, a person location exterior Austin states it even now ideas to host an in-particular person concert Friday with rapper Vanilla Ice.

But while news of the exhibit has sparked concerns about social distancing, the concert venue’s organizer told The Texas Tribune that only eighty four tickets have been marketed as of Wednesday night. Barret Brannam, operator of Emerald Level Bar & Grill on Lake Travis, said that, opposite to experiences suggesting that the variety of admirers at Friday’s exhibit will be about two,500, the most occupancy for the function has been set to 450 people today.

“We’re not striving to buck the procedure — we are going in the recommendations we have been given,” Brannam said. “Tunes is aspect of Emerald Level — and it will usually be aspect of us going ahead.”

Brannam told the Austin Chronicle, which very first described the ideas for the concert, that Emerald Level is formally classified as a cafe for the reason that at least fifty one% of its revenue are food items. That would signify it can run at 50% capacity below Gov. Greg Abbott’s latest govt buy aiming to sluggish the distribute of the coronavirus. Under that buy, bars ended up pressured to near their doorways, but dining places can even now run 50 %-complete. Neighborhood officers do have the power below his buy to cancel public outside functions with additional than one hundred people today.

Regardless of the paltry ticket revenue so significantly, Brannam said that additional people today might check out the exhibit from their boats while on the lake.

He also pressured the basic safety precautions the location had been getting for months and prepared to put into action Friday, this kind of as getting temperatures at the entrance and requesting that attendees social length and have on masks. Brannam said his location was not requiring people today to have on masks, because “I’m not their mom and dad [and] I can’t make them do it.”

“We minimized the capacity to 450 people today for the reason that which is what we believed we could place with tables,” he said, stressing that the location has followed Abbott’s recommendations because the pandemic strike the point out. “It is definitely not as gross as people today are generating it out to be.”

On Wednesday, point out wellness officers described its maximum variety of coronavirus instances still with 8,000 new instances. That figure additional than doubled what the state’s case rely was about two months in the past.

Brannam said twenty staff members at the location analyzed previous week for the virus had negative success. He said people today “can dwell existence in a way that safeguards you” and that while the location is implementing social distancing measures “the finest we can … at the finish of the working day, there is even now in this state something named private obligation.”

“[Vanilla Ice] has previously been paid,” he said. “If I cancel the exhibit … I’m just flushing money down the rest room. … If only a few hundred people today occur out, at least these people today received to see a amazing exhibit.”