Bucs-49ers not only game in Tampa

Nude dance club king Joe Redner talks trash about enforcement of the lap dancing rule in another key matchup.

By BRADY DENNIS, Times Staff Writer
© St. Petersburg Times
published January 11, 2003

TAMPA -- Ginger wore a see-through wrap around her waist and a worried look on her face.

"Do you think they're coming back this weekend, Joe?" asked the stripper, charged earlier this week with violating a Tampa ordinance that requires nude dancers to stay 6 feet from customers.

"I don't think so," said Joe Redner, owner of the Mons Venus strip club on N Dale Mabry Highway.

Several other dancers were entertaining male customers in the neon haze, each of them violating the 6-foot rule by at least 6 feet.

In typical I-dare-you-to fashion, Redner said city officials are scared to raid his club on this football playoff weekend. He said they wouldn't risk finding San Francisco 49ers players inside.

"They might have to call off the game," Redner said. "I think (city officials) would be embarrassed by that."

The city's ordinance, part of a crusade to ban lap dancing, is barely 2 years old. But it has created an enduring, passionate rivalry in a town notorious for nude bumping and grinding.

On one hand, there are people like Tampa police detective Dale Tuvell, who says: "It is a violation. It is enforceable, and we intend to enforce it."

On the other, there are people like Larry Wolfe, owner of the Seven Seas strip club, who says: "How do you deal with a bully? You stand up to him."

Since the ordinance was passed in December 1999, more than 300 people have been charged during raids, according to Tampa police records.

They include two National Hockey League players who Tuvell arrested last January. But what if he saw a key Bucs player getting a lap dance on the eve of Sunday's game?

"Doesn't matter to me," Tuvell said. "If they're committing a crime, they can take their consequences."

Not all of the arrests have stood up.

In August 2001, Hillsborough County Judge Elvin Martinez dismissed all lap dancing cases pending in his court, which affected about 35 defendants.

Martinez called the ordinance "unpractical" and said it failed to further "a substantial government interest."

Police put a halt to the raids until Hillsborough Circuit Judge Rex Barbas ruled in November that the city was within its rights to enforce the ordinance.

Since then, the random busts have continued.

Redner and others have vowed to keep fighting to have the ordinance overturned in court, all the while ignoring it each day at their businesses.

Meanwhile, clubs where raids have taken place say they continue to pay bail money and legal bills for those arrested.

Club owners acknowledge that there seems to be no pattern to the raids.

Some happen on weeknights, others on weekends. Some come at peak business hours, others during down time.

Tuvell said it doesn't matter when police barge in. He knows they'll find people breaking the rule.

"I have never expected them to comply," he said. "Based on past history, they are never going to."

So the rivalry rolls on.

Long after the last whistle in Raymond James Stadium on Sunday, Tampa's law officers and owners of nude dance clubs still will be butting heads.

"I'm sure we'll see them again," Wolfe said. "(But) police harassment has never deterred free-minded people."

Tuvell said handcuffs, not harassment, seem to be a pretty strong deterrent.

"We expect them to be aggravated at us," he said. "After all, one or more of them are going to jail. No one likes that. That's why jail was invented."

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