35 Facts About Joel Wachs

Joel Wachs is an American former politician and lawyer.

Joel Wachs is the president of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts in New York City.

Joel Wachs was a member of the Los Angeles City Council for 30 years, where he was known for his promotion of the arts, support of gay causes, advocacy of rent control and other economic measures.

The unmarried Wachs was a closeted gay man until he was preparing to run for mayor in 1999 at the age of 60.

Joel Wachs was born on March 1,1939, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, the son of Hannah and Archie Joel Wachs, a teacher.

Joel Wachs's father was a Jewish immigrant from Poland who ran a grocery and butcher shop.

The younger of two sons, Joel Wachs "suffered from hay fever so severe that at the height of the ragweed season, his parents sat him in the shop's cold storage room, in a fur coat, to help him breathe".

Joel Wachs grew up in Vermont Knolls, between 79th and 83rd streets and Vermont and Normandie Avenue.

Joel Wachs attended Horace Mann Junior High School and Washington High School, followed by the University of California, Los Angeles, where the "gregarious" Wachs was president of his freshman and junior classes, and of the student body.

Joel Wachs earned a degree at Harvard Law School and a Master of Laws in taxation from New York University.

Joel Wachs served on the Los Angeles City Council from July 1,1971, to September 28,2001, when his resignation took effect.

Joel Wachs's victory was attributed in part to his opposing a multimillion-dollar development in the mountains just north of Beverly Hills.

Joel Wachs was nevertheless easily reelected in April 1987 in the realigned, more conservative district, despite the opposition of the Los Angeles Apartment Owners Association, which attacked him because of his fight for rent control.

Joel Wachs resigned from the City Council 2001 to accept the presidency of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

In 1977, Joel Wachs was appointed vice chairman of a new National Task Force on the Arts, whose goal, he said, was "to put the arts and culture on the agenda of every city government as a mainstream economic and social concern".

Joel Wachs was active in strengthening Los Angeles' ordinance on outdoor advertising signs but was equally active when the city's Building and Safety Commission at first attempted to classify a proposed work by Barbara Kruger as a sign that fell under its jurisdiction.

In 2001, Joel Wachs resigned his council seat and moved to New York City in order to serve as president of the Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts.

Joel Wachs is nominally the chairman of the Andy Warhol Art Authentication Board.

Joel Wachs was a staunch advocate for the arts and for civil rights.

Joel Wachs backed efforts that resulted in public financing of city elections and creation of an ethics commission.

Joel Wachs is sometimes cited as the originator of neighborhood councils in Los Angeles.

Joel Wachs launched numerous studies of such councils in other cities and produced a booklet to help guide the new representative community groups in Los Angeles.

Joel Wachs was a supporter of levying a city income tax in order to relieve property owners of a tax burden.

Joel Wachs was a decided advocate for rent control in an effort to keep housing affordable for the elderly and the poor.

Joel Wachs's measure outlawing employment discrimination against victims of AIDS was passed unanimously by the City Council, despite the fact that his mail on the subject was running heavily against it.

In 1981, Joel Wachs called for mandatory separation of recyclable materials from regular trash before collection to cope with the city's "growing refuse-disposal crisis".

Joel Wachs successfully advocated for an ordinance change that would allow artists to live and work in commercially zoned districts.

Joel Wachs worked to create a city Cultural Affairs Department.

Joel Wachs cast the only vote against a city ordinance prohibiting minors from purchasing drug paraphernalia, saying in 1983 he did not think police officers should spend their time raiding head shops.

Joel Wachs proposed an eventually successful idea for the city to provide a number of dog parks, where Los Angeles' nearly 200,000 licensed dogs could run free.

Joel Wachs went to Sacramento in January 1984 to unsuccessfully argue with state prison authorities that Dan White, the San Francisco supervisor who had killed gay leader Harvey Milk and Mayor George Moscone, should be moved out of Los Angeles County, where he had been paroled after serving five years in prison for the killings.

Joel Wachs was credited with forging a 1997 deal with the developers of a downtown sports arena that lifted some of the onerous provisions that would have worked to the financial disadvantage of the city.

Joel Wachs was an advocate for slow-growth development and was one of the cowriters of Proposition U, along with Zev Yaroslavsky and Marvin Braude.

Joel Wachs's colleagues described him as "a human guy, a lot of heart".

Joel Wachs is portrayed by Benny Safdie in the film Licorice Pizza set in 1970s San Fernando Valley.