Now that concerts are finally coming back, one punk rock band in Florida has found a creative way to make sure that the mosh pit is COVID-free: They’re offering “discount” tickets of $18 in advance and $20 at the door of the venue — VFW Post 39 in St. Petersburg, undoubtedly one of Florida’s most legendary punk venues, I’m sure — for anyone who brings their vaccine certification.
The “regular” ticket price for those who for whatever reason have not received the jab? $1,000.
“DISCOUNTED tickets are available for $18 in advance, $20 day of show,” a description for the Jun. 26 show, which features the punk bands Teenage Bottlerocket, MakeWar and Rutterkin, read.
“To be eligible for the DISCOUNT, you will need to bring a government issued photo ID and your PHYSICAL COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card,” the promotion carefully explained. “If you do not care about the discount, tickets are available for a flat rate of $999.99.”
“Note that all staff, volunteers, and band members will be vaccinated. Also know if you buy one of these advance tickets and show up without your vaccination card or government issued photo id, you won’t be let in at this price, you will need to pay the remaining $981.99 to enter or go back and get your card.
“We are NOT telling you what to do here, we are making a business decision and letting the market decide. If someone wants to come in unvaccinated, they will scare off a large number of patrons and will need to pay the difference.”
This bright idea came not from the band itself but from promoter Paul Williams, reported WFTS-TV, which first learned of the story from a disgruntled would-be concertgoer who understandably took issue with the pricing structure.
“I saw the announcement for the concert. And then you go to purchase the tickets, it says that you have to show proof of vaccination, which I do not have,” punk rock fan Brittney Wigen said.
“Most people who are avid concertgoers know the risks. There’s other risks besides COVID. I think they should trust us a little bit more.”
Williams, for his part, seems to think that the kind of people who frequent punk concerts ought not to take such risks.
“We’re just trying to do a show safely,” he told WFTS. “And they should go out and get vaccinated to protect themselves and their families and their community.”
Teenage Bottlerocket had their initial doubts, but as they’ve compliantly received the jab, they were apparently easily persuaded to go along with the discriminatory pricing structure.
“We’re all vaccinated. We encourage everyone to get vaccinated so we can see you in the pit,” singer and guitarist Ray Carlisle said.
The fact that this is a punk rock show couldn’t possibly be more hilarious or emblematic of today’s completely un-punk rock left-wing culture. Whatever happened to being edgy and anti-establishment?
The same social factions that proudly profess to rage against patriarchy, capitalism and all things generally emblematic of “the man” have gone from looking down their noses at conventional “normies” to nagging everyone about getting an experimental vaccine because the government said so.
I mean, seriously?
“We encourage everyone to get vaccinated so we can see you in the pit”?
You couldn’t possibly get any less punk rock than this.
This is exactly the sort of discrimination that Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has been actively trying to prevent with his recent executive action and later legislation banning the use of vaccination passports in the Sunshine State.
“Under no circumstances will the state be asking you to show proof of vaccination, and I don’t think private companies should be doing that either,” DeSantis said, according to WFTS. “If you want to go to an event, go to an event. If you don’t, don’t. But to be requiring people to provide all this proof, that’s not how you get society back to normal.”
Did you catch it? DeSantis has forsaken the official pandemic-era trope of “keeping people safe” for the more important “get society back to normal.” He also described the difference between pandemic recovery and pandemic hysteria, the latter of which often isn’t even actually keeping anyone safe so much as allowing one group to shun another for lack of social compliance.
And sure enough, true to form for COVID-19 hysteria, it appears that Teenage Bottlerocket and Williams’ plans to keep their concerts COVID-free are about as consistent as Dr. Anthony Fauci.
The band said that Wigen, who had the virus too recently to be able to receive her two doses in time for the concert, is welcome to come to one of their other concerts where there are not any vaccine requirements, and Williams said there will be events later this summer that won’t charge exorbitant prices to the unvaccinated masses.
It’s almost as if charging $1,000 to unvaccinated concertgoers is entirely pointless and arbitrary, like so many of the measures government and businesses alike have taken to “stop the spread” despite all logic.
There was a time when no doubt many a conservative fretted about the detrimental influence of punk rock culture; now, punk rock has succumbed to the influence of socially enforced medical tyranny.
America will never be a “papers, please” society — that is, if we actively work to prevent this from happening. And since politics is downstream from culture, the fact that punk concerts are shamelessly discriminating against people who won’t get the government-recommended vaccine gives us a pretty chilling look at where this cultural current is taking us.
This article appeared originally on The Western Journal.