True, Joe Redner does not leap to mind when we think of local heroes. The owner of Mons Venus, the area's most renowned strip club, gets rich by providing a venue for naked women to wriggle and writhe and dance on men's laps. Some consider this a public service; some consider it a sin. We figure that most locals see it as a sleazy slice of Tampa nightlife that nonetheless has the right to exist. Besides being an adult entertainment mogul, Redner can be crude, brash and obnoxious. So why is he a local hero? Because we need guys like Joe Redner. He's the sand in the suntan lotion, the loose cannon that keeps firing shots over the bow of local government. He makes politicians uneasy, makes them look over their shoulders, reminds them, constantly, that they can't just get away with whatever they damn well please. He takes them to court, repeatedly. He berates them, and debates them, in public.
Yes, Redner engages in most of these skirmishes to keep his club open, to keep the cha-ching going. But in our free-market economy, we have come to rely on self-interested people to keep repressive forces at bay. In the end, Redner's constant struggle on behalf of his own economic self-interest ultimately benefits the public good.
Redner isn't doing it just for the money, though. "I'm happy fighting," he snorts. "I feel like I'm accomplishing something for society."
Says Luke Lirot, Redner's first amendment attorney, "You need people like him to make the process work. If everyone gets trod upon and accepts it, eventually society as a whole suffers. When one person will stand up against oppression, and do so with Redner's ferocity and dedication, then everyone benefits. Government is less inclined to be abusive of people's rights than they would be otherwise."
Redner, 63, moved to Tampa from New Jersey when he was 8. He attended Chamberlain High School but never graduated. Before entering the world of adult clubs, he poured terrazzo floors, was an inspector at Continental Can, sold furniture at Levitz, worked as a traveling carnie. He got a job managing a '70s go-go bar called the Deep South on Hillsborough and Rome avenues.
In 1976, he opened the Night Gallery, a strip club on Hillsborough. His partner was a bail bondsman. The heat flared up from the get-go. "The cops'd come in, arrest eight or 10 people and we'd bond them out," Redner says. "They'd do that three, four times a day. It was war."
Redner set about building an empire in the '80s. He opened the Tanga Lounge, then Mons Venus, then other joints. The going got really bad when he branched into Citrus County. He opened Bare Elegance in 1989 and was promptly arrested for operating a business without a license (adult business licenses were unavailable in Citrus County). He bonded out, opened again, got arrested again, bonded out and opened again. After his third arrest, the judge set his bail at a quarter-million dollars. Render spent 57 days in jail, where he got his GED and proved to be a helpful jailhouse lawyer.
Lirot says the Bare Elegance case went "through every single level of the judicial system." Redner sued and a jury in Ocala awarded him $500,000. That went along with the $250,000 he won from Hillsborough County when a court found its zoning law unconstitutional.
Outside the adult entertainment world, Redner has brought a federal lawsuit challenging the "protest zones" that politicians use to herd dissidents away from their public appearances.
Redner is something of a health nut. At age 50, he assessed his lifestyle and saw that he was "surviving instead of living. I don't drink, don't smoke. I eat about eight different kinds of fruit in the morning. I don't eat chicken, fish, meat, eggs or dairy. Well, I have ice cream once in awhile. I'm a vegan who eats ice cream.
"People will say, 'Look, he's growing old gracefully.' No, no, no. I'm fighting it every inch of the way."
This article appears in Sep 25 – Oct 1, 2003.