Heads up, Rattlesnake Island. Vanilla Ice is moving in.
Rapper, actor, construction contractor and television host Robert Van Winkle, who performs under the name Vanilla Ice, has bought two homes in the tiny barrier island community just west of A1A between St. Augustine and Marineland, according to First Coast News.
“He bought two of them on Rattlesnake Island, right off of A1A,” “Good Morning Jacksonville” co-anchor Keitha Nelson said. “We’re told that Vanilla Ice will keep one home and flip the other.”
Who is Vanilla Ice?
Van Winkle, 55, has had several careers and spent a lot of time in the news. The Texas native was a breakdancer (which is where he got his nickname “Vanilla Ice”) and a championship motocross racer before turning to music. his first album, “Hooked,” which was re-recorded under the title “To the Extreme” and featured his breakout hit “Ice Ice baby,” became the fastest-selling hip hop album of all time. During the late 90s, Vanilla Ice was everywhere, even appearing in the movie “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles II: The Secret of the Ooze,” which featured his song “Ninja Rap” on the soundtrack.
When his popularity began to fade, he returned to motocross competitions and moved to Florida, where he became a world-class jet ski racer, continued to release music and perform with other rappers to mixed reviews, and appeared on multiple reality shows such as “Celebrity Boxing,” “The Surreal Life” and “Dancing with the Stars.”
Van Winkle also studied real estate and began flipping houses (buying, renovating and selling at a profit) in the 90s. His show “The Vanilla Ice Project” debuted in 2010 on the DIY network, part of HGTV, “renovates dilapidated mansions in his hometown of Palm Beach, FL, and turns them into pimped out palatial estates fit for a rockstar,” according to vanillaicerealestate.com. The show ran till 2019.
Ice returns:Vanilla Ice ’90s hit ‘Ninja Rap’ is in ‘Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles’ movie with Seth Rogen
Why did Vanilla Ice buy two homes on Rattlesnake Island in Florida?
According to First Coast News’ sources, Van Winkle plans to keep one of the homes and flip the other as part of a show he’s doing. The show has not been officially announced, Nelson said.
Van Winkle currently lives in Wellington, Florida.
Where is Rattlesnake Island?
Rattlesnake Island isn’t technically an island by itself, it’s part of a barrier island on the east coast of Florida by the Matanzas Inlet. It’s also the home of Fort Matanzas, a Spanish fort completed in 1742 to control the inlet.
Where did Rattlesnake Island get its name?
“In the early 1900s when dredging work for the Intracoastal Waterway was begun by the United States Corps of Engineers, the name Rattlesnake Island was taken from a nearby fishing camp,” according to the National Park Service. “Another possibility is that when workers began the restoration work in 1916, they found rattlesnakes among the brush and rubble on the fort.”
Was there a massacre on Rattlesnake Island?
Almost 200 years before the fort was built, in 1565, King Philip II of Spain learned that the French had established a fort in Florida, settled by Protestants. General Pedro Menéndez de Aviles was sent to remove the French. The Spanish settled to a tiny Timacuan village called Seloy, which they renamed “St. Augustine.”
Frenchman Jean Ribault sailed to attack the Spanish at St. Augustine but a hurricane wrecked his ships between present-day Daytona Beach and Cape Canaveral. Meanwhile, Menéndez led his forces to attack Fort Caroline, killing the soldiers and sending the women and children to Havana, Cuba. He learned that some of the Frenchmen were trying to get back to the fort but had been blocked by the inlet, and his forces captured them. Ultimately nearly 250 French Huguenots were killed, leading to the inlet and later the fort being named Matanzas, which means “slaughter” in Spanish.
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