Fringe Florida: Travels Among Mud Boggers, Furries, Ufologists, Nudists, and Other Lovers of Unconventional Lifestyles (11 page)

Cuba and leading a covert U.S. assassination attempt of Fidel Castro.

He was never convicted or served a day in jail. He allegedly controlled

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Tampa’s underworld until his death in 1983, seven years after Joe

opened his first club.

Evangelicals have deep roots in Tampa as well. At the same time the

city was considered a hell on earth, University of South Florida histo-

rian Gary Mormino notes, it had an abundance of street preachers who

attempted to save the wicked from flames in the afterlife. Rev. Billy

Graham, famed spiritual advisor to presidents, got his start preaching

to bums, prostitutes, and derelicts on Tampa’s downtown streets. Gra-

ham studied nearby at the Florida Bible Institute. A historical marker

on Franklin Street memorializes his ministry.

Many a street preacher has attempted to save Joe’s soul, but none

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as persistently as Larry Keffer. He frequently appeared outside Mons

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with a tiny flock, signs promising hell to sinners, and a bullhorn power-

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ful enough to project his fire-and-brimstone message to Mars. Keffer

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called passing dancers “harlots,” customers “masturbators,” and Joe a

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“wicked Sodomite.” Joe was known to storm out with his own bullhorn

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and heckle Keffer and his flock. Once, when Joe was really worked up,

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he shouted: “You just want to suck my dick, don’t you? . . . You’re a

closet queen! You can’t fool God!” The spectacle made for darkly enter-

taining streetside theater and became its own mini tourist attraction;

sometimes, motorists stopped to take pictures.

The Joe I meet in his office is infinitely tamer. He offers tea or bot-

tled water and, as always, is disarmingly candid. Physically, Joe’s not

an imposing figure. At seventy-one, he’s lean to the point of being wiry,

toned from daily gym workouts, and as spry as men half his age. A

vegan, he lives on raw vegetables and fruit smoothies, lunching daily

at nearby Sweet Tomatoes. Only the deep crevasses on his angular

face betray past forays in the fast lane. Frameless glasses disappear

between his thick, dark eyebrows and hollow checks; his lips are thin.

A thick gold chain around his neck gleams against his olive complexion.

Dressed with a hip nonchalance, he’s wearing cargo shorts, a black V-

neck T-shirt, and a baseball cap advertising his son’s next-door brew-

ery. A salt-and-pepper ponytail hangs past his shoulders. He looks like

a well-to-do old hippie, which in many ways he is.

He talks about his philosophy of the big life questions as if we’re sit-

ting around a campfire staring at the stars. “There always has to be a be-

ginning and ending to everything. I used to think that, because that’s

what I was taught,” he says referring to his upbringing in a Protestant

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church. He leans back in his leather executive chair and stretches his

ponytail straight up, running his hands over it unconsciously as if pull-

ing thoughts from his brain. “Now I think we don’t have the ability to

know what that concept is. There’s no beginning or no end. We don’t

have the ability of understanding. Everything could not have appeared

out of nothing. It’s not a legitimate concept. I don’t know what it is, but

what I do know is that no one else does either. There’s not a God.”

Running a flesh business and being vilified by the morality police for

more than thirty years can understandably lead a man to a Nietzschean

philosophy of life, one where God is dead and the superman creates his

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own moral standards.

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Yes, this man who’s made millions from all-nude lap dance factories

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is quite principled, although his is a modified Golden Rule. “It’s not the

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government’s moral code. It’s my own, and it’s much better than theirs.

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I don’t lie, cheat, or steal. My moral code is not about how adults have

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sex. As long as I’m doing what I think is right, I’m not going to let any-

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body tell me what to do. Not the government or the mob.”

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Joe believes that he and anyone else has the right to upend social

norms as long as no one else is hurt. If it merely irritates other people,

well, that’s part of the fun.

On the surface it might seem that Joe has adopted a convenient

philosophy, one that allows him to run a taboo business with a clear

conscience. Hang with him long enough and it’s clear his convictions

run much deeper. He’s a maverick to the core.

You get a sense of this just by studying his headquarters. He con-

verted an old warehouse into a hip space leaving the high ceiling and

ductwork exposed and painting the walls warm colors. Quite an im-

provement over the Mons and slightly bohemian. Newspaper clip-

pings, antiwar and environmental ads, mockeries of former President

George W. Bush and his nemesis, Ronda Storms, campaign posters,

protest signs, and
Doonesbury
cartoons cover his office walls.

A large poster of Joe wrapped in and chained to an American flag

hangs in the shadows behind a big-screen TV. He used the image in his

campaign literature, though given his ponytail, high cheekbones, and

dark complexion, the poster more resembles the propaganda of the

American Indian movement.

A sign propped against the wall quotes a 1969 U.S. Supreme Court

decision: “Freedom of expression would not truly exist if the right

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could be exercised only in an area that a benevolent government has

provided as a safe haven for crackpots.” Joe notes that he carried it

when he protested Free Speech Zones, during a Tampa appearance

by President George W. Bush in 2002. Naturally, Joe did this outside

the designated protest area. He was arrested, but charges were later

dropped. He sued, claiming designated protest zones violate the right

to free speech. He shakes his head in disappointment. He lost that

battle.

Surprisingly, a mayoral campaign sign for his staunch opponent in

the lap dance war is tacked to his wall. Joe says he voted for Bob Buck-

horn in the final election. “I’m not going to vote for or against some-

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body just because of how they are going to deal with my adult busi-

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ness. I’m going to back the person I think would be best for the city of

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Tampa. They kind of go hand in hand because if they are the kind of

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person I think they are, they really aren’t going to mess with an adult

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business unless they are a nuisance. And I’m not a nuisance.”

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He adds that prior to the election, Buckhorn privately indicated that

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he wasn’t going to go after the strip clubs again. “I don’t worry about

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Joe Redner, Mon Venus

owner and perennial politi-

cal candidate, shown inside

his club. Photo by Chris

O’Meara. By permission of

Associated Press, New York,

NY.

Buckhorn,” Joe says. “I think he has grown up. It was a real, real embar-

rassment for them, that 6-foot-rule. Of course, I might be wrong. If I

am? I’ve still got some other tricks I haven’t pulled out.”

No doubt.

Referring to his various news clippings, Joe says he spends a good

part of his day reading news stories and editorials. “I’m not interested

in fishing and all the things that most people want to do when they’ve

got enough money where they can do that stuff,” he says. “So, I have

nothing to do but gather information.”

Joe is fidgety and sometimes rudderless in conversation, often for-

getting what he was just saying. His self-diagnosis is “attention defi-

cient hyperactive disorder,” which he can’t fully remember the term for.

“If I get off-track I can think and think and think, and I can’t get back to

where I was. It’s always been that way . . . I’m almost immediately bored

with anything. Once I’ve done it, I need something else to stimulate

me.”

He attributes this to why he’s been such a philanderer, though ad-

mitting that running strip clubs hasn’t helped. He’s had two failed mar-

riages and has run through so many girlfriends that he’s given up on

relationships. He dated some of his dancers, but in the distant past, he

emphasizes. “I’m seventy-one,” he reminds. “There are other things on

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my mind. It’s not like it used to be.”

He still appreciates a beautiful woman’s touch. “I go in and get a back

rub, feet rub, lotion,” he says of visits to the Mons. “I swear to you, I

never ask anybody to do anything. They know they don’t have to do

that. They know they aren’t going to be treated any differently because

they do or don’t do it. They like me. I like them. And they like me be-

cause I like them. I don’t mean sexually. We like each other. We respect

each other, treat one another with dignity.”

Joe lives alone in a house under 1,200 square feet just a couple of

blocks from the Mons. He has five children by three women, a slew of

grandchildren, and several great-grandchildren. Framed baby pictures

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are scattered around his office.

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Like most Floridians, he’s not originally from the Sunshine State.

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He was born in Summit, New Jersey, in 1940. His dad left when he was

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just a baby, and his mother moved with him and his older brother to

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Tampa in 1949. Joe was shy, had trouble learning in school. His mom,

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a waitress, wanted her sons to know God, the Bible, and Jesus. She in-

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sisted that they go to a Christian church of their choosing. Joe settled

on a Methodist church within walking distance and took communion

around age ten. He was disappointed when it didn’t give him instant

enlightenment. “He put this thing in my mouth, I sit there, and they all

join in this prayer. It didn’t change a goddamn thing.”

Joe started drinking at sixteen, quit school in the tenth grade, and

for the next sixteen years drifted from one job and woman to another.

He married a local girl who got a job stripping in Peoria, Illinois. Joe

worked the door. They had two kids. Joe took a job with a Tampa car-

nival operator coaxing fairgoers to play game-toss for plush toys. He

stuck with it for five years. Divorced and back in Tampa, he bounced

through occupations. He laid terrazzo floors, sold furniture, made tin

cans in a factory. In between jobs he hustled pool in downtown Tampa

dive bars and shacked up with a woman who had his third child.

In the early 1970s, he was doing some carpentry work at one of his

favorite bars when owner Pat Matassini offered him the manager’s

job at the Deep South, a rough-and-tumble go-go club that Matassini

owned with Bobby Rodriguez. The Deep South was a dive with one

small pedestal for dancers who wore pasties and G-strings. Joe built

more platforms and added dancers. Within eight months, business

doubled. Life was good. An alcoholic, Joe was managing a bar, and bet-

ter yet, he was surrounded by scantily clad women who weren’t averse

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to hanging out with him after-hours. Religion? The Bible? Forget it.

One night about 3:00 a.m. on his way home from the club, Joe heard

something on the radio that would change his life and ultimately the

face of Tampa. The U.S. Supreme Court had ruled that a Jacksonville

drive-in theater could show movies with brief glimpses of nudity. The

highest court deemed it free speech protected under the First Amend-

ment. Joe thinks, “Dance is speech—ballet, the Indian war dances,

dances in Africa. Nudity is content of that speech, therefore it’s gotta

be protected by the First Amendment. Christ, let’s see if they really

mean that.”

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Joe couldn’t convince the Deep South owners to go all-nude. There

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was no law in Tampa against it, but no one had ever dared try. It was

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sure to bring heat. Matassini, Deep South’s co-owner, was already fac-

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ing a federal conviction for counterfeiting.

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Joe didn’t give up. He became partners with a bail bondsman who