Fringe Florida: Travels Among Mud Boggers, Furries, Ufologists, Nudists, and Other Lovers of Unconventional Lifestyles by Lynn Waddell

parking.
    nir
    Joe suggests mobsters have always backed off because they saw him
    F
    as a kindred spirit. “I think they respected me because I was fighting
    06
    the government, and I was just fighting and fighting and fighting. I
    think they saw that, and they kind of liked it.”
    He adds: “I guess having [Diecidue’s] jukebox in there was kind of a
    protection for me from the others while he was there.”
    When Joe opened Mons Venus, it actually was an upgrade from the
    building’s previous tenant. The Huddle House Inn—opened by home-
    town celebrity Rick Cassaris who was a running back for the Chicago
    Bears—had evolved into a house of ill repute. Its horseshoe-shaped
    booths were numbered and equipped with telephones. Prostitutes
    would sit in a booth and Johns would dial up ones they liked. The city
    was shutting it down, and the owner was desperate to sell. Joe bought
    the building in 1982, ripped out the booths, and opened what would
    become the world-famous Mons Venus.
    With the Mons and the Tanga bringing in thousands per week, the
    high-school dropout and former carnie was living large. He started
    looking more like a strip-club owner, sporting a thick gold chain, pinky
    ring, and a Burt Reynolds mustache. He bought a five-bedroom house
    on the Hillsborough River and 26-foot luxury cruiser. There was weed,
    cocaine, and all the stereotypical traps of a nightclub lifestyle. He was
    caught snorting at a Tampa Bay Buccaneers game in 1983. Not long af-
    ter that felony arrest, he decided to get healthy. His alcoholism was so
    proof
    bad his skin was yellow and his hangovers put him in bed for two weeks
    at a time. He claims he gave up all his poisons at once, including booze
    and cigarettes. (He later confessed that he had continued smoking pot
    until he was diagnosed with lung cancer.)
    Sober, his world got bigger. He and his full-time lawyer, Luke Lirot,
    started a public-access show called Voice of Freedom . Although billed as a place to debate free-speech issues, Joe used it to blast opponents of
    adult entertainment. He relished debating callers, exchanging insults
    and cussing with abandon, confrontations that would never be allowed
    on network television.
    ap
    Throughout the 1980s and into the 1990s, he expanded his strip-
    Mar
    club enterprises, opening clubs in Ybor City, Clearwater, St. Peters-
    t
    burg, and Homosassa and battling local governments in court. St. Pe-
    Fo
    tersburg Times writer Jeff Klinkenberg reported in 1991 that Joe had
    gni
    at least thirty-one cases pending in county, state, and federal courts.
    K e
    Although unsuccessful in many, he won more than $600,000 in judg-
    ht
    ments the following year.
    16
    The bulk of the damages were paid by the City of Homosassa, where
    he had attempted to operate another nude club. He spent two months
    in jail there for operating the club against a court order. He used the
    time to get his GED diploma and study law.
    Legacy of Skin
    Since the end of the lap dance war, the Mons isn’t even Joe’s primary
    source of income, although he says it’s a nice chunk of it. He doesn’t
    plan on selling the Mons. “There’s no retirement. My life is doing this.”
    The bulk of his income these days comes from real estate invest-
    ments. He’s a landlord of more than a dozen homes and several com-
    mercial properties, including an old Ybor City building retrofitted with
    the latest green technology and a massive office building he rents to
    the IRS, an irony that he relishes. He has a film-production studio and
    is invested in his son’s brewery.
    He sold his other strip-club properties. He got a sweet $7 million
    for the former City Council Follies and two adjoining properties after
    beating the Florida Department of Transportation in court in 2005.
    The state had originally offered $3.4 million. It was the largest eminent-
    domain settlement for an adult business property in Florida’s history.
    proof
    What does someone do with all that money? Joe has