Being naughty – or notorious –- has its price as TV celebrity Vice Ganda is finding out.
Cebu City Hall treasury employees were sent to his Cebu concert on Sunday evening to check gate receipts to implement the full 10 percent amusement tax on ticket sales.
READ: Bigger tax imposed on Vice Ganda concert
While the final tally is still being made, on-site observations by Cebu Daily News showed a packed ballroom at the Waterfront Cebu City Hotel and Casino. Not all guests held full-priced tickets. Buy-one-take-one tickets were snapped up.
A big crowd came despite the publicized take-down of the concert’s promotion billboards the other week on orders of the head of the Cebu City Anti-Indecency Board (CCAIB), City Administrator Lucelle Mercado, who said the images were “sexually suggestive.”
The concert was self-rated by organizers as R-13 or restricted to adults.
LIKE A GAY BAR SHOW
Mercado didn’t watch the show but said she received feedback from City Hall personnel present who compared it to a “gay bar show” with off-color jokes and sensuous dance moves.
“The show itself should not be like that. I asked from those who attended and they said it was very suggestive, like a performance in a gay bar. That’s not allowed. We are strict about that. We can’t have those kinds of shows,” she told CDN.
Mercado yesterday said she asked a certain city official to relay to concert organizers another warning against holding a similar concert again in Cebu City or else the city would impose a fine as violation of City Ordinance 1408 which creates the CCAIB.
Mercado said most concerts held in Cebu showcase singing, dancing and music performances. CDN observed the venue was packed with all seats occupied. Some guests had to stand near the exit doors of the Pacific Grand Ballroom of Waterfront Cebu City Hotel and Casino throughout the concert.
Upper and lower box seats were fully occupied. Fan clubs like the “Little Ponies” and “ViceRylle” brought their banners and streamers. On stage, ,there were no shirtless , muscled men lying down or surrounding the gay comedian as the billboards portrayed.
Vice Ganda did his first song-and-dance numbers in a long, blonde wig and glittering black unitard with boots, that showed the tops of his thighs.
Only two male dancers with blonde topnots and harem pants accompanied him, not the crowd of glistening macho companions shown in the poster.
He later changed to an oversized, pull-over shirt with a delicate cartoon drawing of Vice Ganda’s face on the front. He paired it with thigh-high black leather boots.
In his opening spiel, the popular Kapamilya celebrity, who has 2.1 million followers on Instagram and 5.4 million on Twitters, jokingly thanked the CCAIB for the hype it caused over the billboards, saying the concert was “sold out”.
The same message appeared in his website: “ViceGandangGandaSaSarili sa Cebu Concert is sold out. Daghang salamat Cebuanos for the love.”
Mercado, CCAIB chairperson, took it calmly.
READ: Another Vice Ganda billboard removed; concert to proceed | Billboard ‘too sexy’ for City Hall
“If they’re looking at it that way, that it helped, then that’s fine,” Mercado told CDN later.
”But it doesn’t really matter. The action was done because of our objection to the (billboard) layout that was presented,” Mercado told CDN, who stressed that one was positioned in front of a public elementary school in plain view of pupils.
She said what was important was that the city was able to take down the billboards for the “adults only” music concert.
BUY-ONE-TAKE-ONE
Cebu City Treasurer Diwa Cuevas said her staff were fielded to check on ticket sales at the gate during the concert.
She gave a different impression of the attendance of paying guests.
“Actually, most of the tickets used were complementary. Daghan kaayo. There were also buy-one-take one tickets. When I went inside, there were a lot of vacant seats,” said Cuevas who watched the concert.
She said concert organizers TSE Live Inc. paid the city an initial P20,000 but the treasurer’s office still had to check and count tickets received at the gate.
Stubs of paid tickets are torn off and collected. Stubs of complementary tickets or the free half of a buy-one-take-one tickets were separated.
Ticket prices ranged from P780 for the lower balcony to Platinum seats up front at P3,850.
The Cebu City Council earlier granted tax exemption for the concert, then later revoked it when the controversy broke out over the CAIB’s complaint that the billboard images were “sexually suggestive”.
The City Council had earlier agreed to waive the tax if concert organizers donated P10,000 each to three beneficiary organizations including the Philippine Councilors League and the Cebu City Task Force on Street Children.
CDN tried to contact TSE Live Inc.