Joe Redner, Tampa's 'Strip Club King' and longtime courtroom combatant, dies at 86

Joe Redner, the Tampa businessman, activist and perennial candidate known as the city's "Strip Club King," died Friday, Oct. 16, at age 86, his family said. Redner, who opened the Mons Venus nude club on Dale Mabry Highway in 1981 and spent decades fighting local governments in court over it, died peacefully in his sleep, according to an announcement posted to his Facebook page by his daughter, Joy Lynn Redner, WFLA reported.

For more than four decades, Redner was one of the most recognizable and polarizing figures in Tampa public life: a club owner who was arrested again and again, a litigant whose cases helped shape adult entertainment law, a candidate who ran for city, county and state office, and later a landlord whose tenants included a craft brewery and, by his own account, the Internal Revenue Service.

The Mons Venus

Redner was best known as the owner of the Mons Venus, the nude club near Raymond James Stadium that he opened in 1981. The club, which does not serve alcohol, became so well known that Redner liked to tell interviewers that people recognized its name in Europe. Wikipedia and other accounts have long described him as the "father of the nude lap dance."

In 2025, Redner sold the business to a competing club owner. Under a management agreement, the operators of 2001 Odyssey, the nude club across the street, took over day-to-day operations, while Redner kept the land and became the club's landlord, according to the Tampa Bay Times and other reports at the time.

Decades of fights with City Hall

Redner's battles with Tampa officials began in the 1980s, as the City Council repeatedly tried to restrict what happened inside the Mons Venus. He and the club filed suits that reached the Supreme Court, according to published accounts of his career, and his cases became case law cited in many later disputes over adult entertainment and free expression.

In a 2022 interview with the Tampa Bay Times, Redner estimated he had been arrested more than 150 times on charges including lewd and lascivious conduct, indecent exposure and zoning violations. He said he studied the case law to understand what Florida courts considered a crime, and defended what he believed he could defend. In the early years, he said, he went to jail alongside the dancers as the owner accused of "allowing" the conduct.

His long-running clashes included the city's rule requiring dancers and customers to stay six feet apart, an ordinance pushed by then-council member Bob Buckhorn, who later became mayor. Redner recalled to the Times that when Buckhorn ran for mayor, he asked whether Buckhorn would keep bothering him, and Buckhorn replied that he had better things to do.

His legal fights went beyond the club. In 2005, a jury awarded him more than $7 million after the Florida Department of Transportation took one of his properties by eminent domain for a highway project. The state had valued the property at about $3 million, but jurors agreed that its highest and best use as an adult entertainment site made it worth more.

Gay pride lawsuit and medical marijuana

Later in 2005, Redner filed a federal lawsuit against Hillsborough County commissioners after they voted to bar the county from recognizing gay pride events. When the county argued that he had no personal stake in the issue, Redner amended the suit to state that he is gay, something he had never said publicly before. The fight put him at odds with then-Commissioner Ronda Storms on many occasions.

In 2018, he sued the Florida Department of Health for the right to grow his own marijuana. Redner, who had been treated for stage 4 lung cancer, said his doctor recommended juicing raw cannabis as part of his treatment, a method not covered by the state's medical marijuana law. A trial judge initially allowed him to grow while the case proceeded, but the 1st District Court of Appeal ruled against him in 2019, finding that the law's use of the word "use" did not mean "grow" or "process."

WFLA noted that he was also a longtime advocate for medical marijuana and for gay pride events in the Tampa area.

A candidate who kept running

Redner ran unsuccessfully for office several times, including for Tampa City Council and the state Senate. He ran for the Hillsborough County Commission as an independent in 2006. In March 2007, he finished second in a six-candidate race for City Council District 1 and forced a runoff with the incumbent council chair, winning 44% of the vote but losing the seat.

He also hosted a weekly call-in program on local public access television and ran a website, The Voice of Freedom, that began as a way to inform residents about his legal battles and grew to cover other First Amendment issues. His life was the subject of the 2008 documentary "Strip Club King: The Story of Joe Redner."

Landlord, brewery backer and raw vegan

In later years, Redner described himself mostly as a landlord. In the 2022 Times interview, he said he owned the property across from the Mons Venus that he leased to Cigar City Brewing, a warehouse on Adamo Drive, land on Kennedy Boulevard and about a dozen rental houses that he said he rented cheaply to people who did not have much. He also said he had owned the property that housed Florida Avenue Brewing before buying land in Wesley Chapel, and he ran the Brew Bus, which offers local brewery tours.

"That's the one thing I like to tell people I own: I'm the IRS' landlord," he told the Times, noting that the agency, which he said had audited him repeatedly without finding wrongdoing, leased space from him.

Redner was cancer-free for about a decade after his stage 4 diagnosis, but told the Times in 2022 that the cancer had returned, though not at stage 4, and that he was undergoing radiation. He said he ate mostly a raw vegan diet and worked out on the treadmill regularly.

Early life

Joseph Richard Redner was born in New Jersey on July 2, 1940, and made his life and career in Tampa.

Legacy

To supporters, Redner was a free speech fighter who refused to back down from city officials and won rulings that protected businesses well beyond his own. To critics, he was the face of an industry they spent years trying to regulate out of existence. Funeral and memorial arrangements had not been reported as of Saturday.