Talk about a close encounter.
One strip club in Florida is out of this world — and we’re not talking about the dancers, either.
Tampa’s aptly named 2001 Odyssey has become a genuine roadside attraction, thanks to the massive UFO — complete with colorful lights at night — sitting atop the building.
The club’s website notes it has been featured in films like “The Punisher” and the skater video game “Tony Hawk’s Underground.”
The story of the elaborate piece of rooftop flair dates back to 1969 — the same year Apollo 11 left Cape Canaveral for the moon — when a Finnish designer introduced the idea of interstellar, 500 square-foot modular homes, designed to evoke an alien craft.
They came with a deployable door hatch, porthole-like windows, and all.
But the “Futuro” concept dreamed up by Matti Suuronen didn’t land well with the public — an underwhelming amount of units were sold stateside and the business folded in 1975, according to the Tampa Bay Times.
Still, Florida Futuro sales manager Jerry DeLong wanted to believe in the concept, his son Bruce DeLong told the outlet.
Jerry was a diehard lover of the Stanley Kubrick masterpiece and, with partners, opened the strip club in the 1970s in tribute to Dave and HAL 9000.
They took the display model from a Clearwater site and painstakingly craned it onto the roof — with the first try resulting in a wind gust slamming the ship into the building’s side wall.
Nowadays, new ownership is at the helm of Odyssey — DeLong became a Goodyear tire dealer after his partner got busted in a $1 million counterfeit cash scheme. The building continues to offer a glimpse of the future — as imagined in 1971.
A Google map peek inside shows a very antiquated, cramped main stage room with mirror ceilings, stiff metal chairs, some alien decor, and a neon carpet coveted by most bowling alleys.
There’s also a charming neon sign for the bathroom that reads “The Pisser” — right next to another “Make It Rain” one near an ATM that converts big bills into singles.
The interstellar enigma has been voted “#1 Full Nude Strip Club in Tampa Bay for 19 years running!” according to the club website, however the source of the award was unnamed.
The extraterrestrial theme has also been tried closer to home — Long Island City-based gentlemen’s club Gallagher’s 2000 at one time leaned into the concept with a notorious late-night commercial involving aliens seeing all sides of our solar system.
