#11 – Lloyd Pilchen

March 17th, 2025

Music

Angus (00:06.456)
This is Everything is Somewhere, I’m Angus Stocking. Lloyd Pilchen is a partner with Olivarez Madruga Law Organization. His practice includes municipal land use, water and environmental law.

Lloyd is also a licensed land surveyor with an expertise in land law matters. And I met Lloyd and you might know the name from his work writing for The American Surveyor Magazine, publishers of this podcast, where he’s produced about a dozen excellent essays on the law and the land and such matters. Lloyd, welcome to Everything is Somewhere.

Lloyd (00:50.364)
Thank you, Angus. Hopefully more articles to come.

Angus (00:54.094)
Well, let’s start there. What led to the writing and what’s your goals in the columns that you write for American Surveyor?

Lloyd (01:03.9)
Well, I’ve been reading American Surveyor and other professional magazines that we all know for many years. So I started in the field in the mid-80s and saw these magazines lying around in the break room and always enjoyed the legal articles. This was long before I had any thought about becoming a lawyer. But those articles in particular by Lawyers, we know them from the magazine like Walt Robillard and James Demma. Those were my favorites and they probably, no doubt, influenced me in my career. So when I did become a lawyer, it actually started with, I wrote a letter to the editor. I don’t even remember what it was about, but I commented on something in the magazine.

And Marc Cheves, our editor, called me up and said, you should write an article. So I did at that time. That was in the earlier mid aughts. And I was a new lawyer. I was struggling under the new life of working constantly.

But I enjoyed writing, I wrote two articles in about state boundaries, but it was not a regular thing. And Marc encouraged me, but I didn’t have the time. So then over the years, I would just occasionally write one. More recently, I just decided to step it up a little. Still am not doing more than one or maybe two in a year, but just trying to add to that.

Angus (03:01.89)
And do you think you’ve got a book in you or will these add up to a book?

Lloyd (03:04.444)
If I follow your role model, I don’t know. I mean, I just, frankly, it would have to be something for general readership. I mean, that’s the thing that I find in all of, what I enjoy about writing for American Surveyor is that I’m writing for non-lawyers. So when I, see things written by legal colleagues who are writing for scholarly pieces. I mean, I have friends who are law professors and I admire them for it. That, I just haven’t found any topic that I’ve wanted to write about in a scholarly way. I’m much, much more comfortable being an explainer.

Frankly, Angus, my role models in that are science writers, like going back to when I was a kid in the 70s reading Carl Sagan and Edward O. Wilson and the like. That type of writing where someone with a technical expertise can make the topic engaging and understandable to everyone. That’s what I admire and that’s what I like to do.

Angus (04:37.08)
Great, and you’re speaking my language. My writing has almost exclusively been on the educational essay or non-fiction essay. And I’m often trying to explain or publicize or bring attention to things that I find important. Lloyd, can we back up just a bit? So you started as a land surveyor and transitioned to lawyering.

Angus (05:07.602)
And what was that? That sounds very interesting and you’re not especially unusual. A lot of lawyers take that route, I think. But what was your career like and why did it land surveying and why did it lead to a lawyer? Why was that the natural progression for you?

Lloyd (05:27.056)
We could even back it up a bit and say that I started with archeology. So that’s what I studied anthropology. That’s what I studied in college at University of Illinois in Champaign, where I met my wife. And during that time, during college, I worked in the field in several archeological digs.

three, about three or four. And that’s where I first saw surveyors at work. I didn’t do surveying on an archaeological dig, but I saw it. And I saw maps being created in the field, on site. I saw the tripod set up. And that would be my first introduction. In school, in college, we actually learned some serving, but when I look back on it, it was very rudimentary. mean, we never used an instrument. We called it the gun when I was in the field as a surveyor. Okay. We never used that. We used, it was compass traverse. So we did, the exercises we did in that college class was pacing and using a compass for bearings. So that’s all I studied.

Angus (06:59.694)
Goodness, Lloyd, how old are you?

Lloyd (07:02.972)
I know. That’s the only, you know, the goal was not to become a surveyor. The goal was to understand the concepts of mapping and measuring and, you know, just to have those basics to be an archaeologist. I presume that the archaeologist would hire a professional to do that, but at least the archaeologist would know what was needed.

So that was my introduction to surveying. Then when I graduated college and decided not to pursue an academic life just because I wasn’t interested in it, I wanted to start working. So then I spent my year whatever you want to call it. I was a lifeguard. I worked in a museum in Chicago, the planetarium, and in the gift shop.

And that was sort of my time just trying to figure out what to do next. I lived in Utah. I still love Utah because of the six months I spent there.

And I guess the pressure of I wanted to get out of my parents’ basement just led me to think, you know, I enjoy being outside. enjoy, that’s what I loved about archaeology was being out in the field. And I knew what surveying was. And I decided that’s what I’m going to go for. So I then moved to central Illinois, Springfield.

And that’s where I spent my first years as a surveyor. And those were really seminal formative years for me. And being a chainman on a four-man crew, I just look back on that really as a real romantic time. It was very physical. And it was my connection to the the earlier generation because the party chief who was toward the end of his career, was like, his name was Harold Kaufman, may he rest in peace.

And you know, we surveyors, we older surveyors think of this stereotype, cigarette smoking, and that was him being stuck in a van with a cigarette smoker. There was no concept of that not being cool. He embodied the cowboy. He wore boots. He showed us how to swing a 10 pound maul. And I’m more comfortable with an eight pound. And he taught me everything I knew about everything I would know about working in the field.

Angus (10:07.118)
So he was your father in art, I would call it.

Lloyd (10:12.516)
Yeah, Obi-Wan, whatever you want to call it.

Angus (10:14.668)
Yeah. Mentor.

Lloyd (10:17.168)
Yeah, exactly. That’s what I, Harold is who I think of when I think of a surveyor. And four-man crew meant that he spent a lot of time doing calcs, sitting in the truck, doing calcs, directing us, deciding how the work would proceed in the day, what we would get done, what we would do first, where he drove, he always drove. And then we had an instrument man.

I eventually learned that role. And then one or two chain men. I remember the expression back then was, and I think it’s very, it’s emotional, it’s very philosophical. It’s a good way to think about life, which is no one can hold both ends of a chain.

That’s how it was on that crew. I think that’s no longer the case. mean, you now have, as I understand it, I haven’t followed, I haven’t been in the profession that way for a couple decades now. But my understanding is one man crew, one person crew is pretty common.

Angus (11:37.198)
Yeah, I can give you some insight there. I’ve been a writer for most of the last 20 years, but last summer and currently I started working with a small firm here in my small town and it’s one man crew is the ideal with GNSS equipment. And it’s a little aggravating and complex for me, frankly…

Lloyd (12:05.486)
Well, because we know how it used to be. And I think that would actually be an interesting topic for someone with, I don’t know, social science background or something, just to study. You know, maybe there have been studies about what has that done to the profession? Does it attract a totally different type of person? And, you know, no judgment, just someone who’s not looking to be on a team. I think that would be an interesting thing to learn, but I certainly look back fondly at being part of a crew.

Angus (12:48.098)
Lloyd, sometime around then, you began to study for the LSIT and the LSAT exam. How did you come into that as an academic pursuit to obtain licensure?

Lloyd (13:06.918)
So in Illinois, anyway, you could, and I think it’s true in California, well, I know it’s true in California because I’m licensed in both states. So you can get a license in two ways. You can have a college degree in surveying. There’s two-year programs. I know Fresno State has it, and I forget which school’s in Illinois. And those years in school count as part of your experience. Or you can go purely, what I call, apprenticeship. All experience on the job. So that’s the latter one is the way I did it. So that meant that

Even though I had a four-year college degree, I did not rely on it at all for getting my LS license. I always say it certainly helped in life. I mean, it helps in a job interview. So it wasn’t, I wouldn’t call my college degree in any way useless. And I fell in love twice during college, that has value in itself.

So I went the apprentice ship way and like we said, got licensed in both states. When I moved to California, I also was working in the field as I was in Illinois. And at that time it was a two man crew. So it was, I was the party chief and I had a chain man working with me. Then, now beginning my life in California, then it was just a matter of following the higher salary.

So that ended up being going from the field to the office, spent a lot of years in the 90s drafting tract maps, subdivision maps, and then finally became a manager of a small survey firm, one and then two crews and bringing in business and that sort of thing. And it was during that time that it occurred to me that I would enjoy being a lawyer. That transition there, many of us who are surveyors were on the phone with lawyers, either because it’s a dispute or because probably more common, at least it was for me.

ALTA surveys are part of a real estate transaction. So I was often on the phone with lawyers and it kind of, I don’t know if people still feel this way, growing up I really thought that lawyers were like some special breed and super intelligent or something. Being on the phone with them I realized, you know what, anyone can do this.

Lloyd (16:22.16)
That kind of helped my confidence. like I said, from early on, I was always drawn to it. I had two lawyers in my family, not a lot, an uncle and an older brother. I would say that that, you know, it certainly made being a lawyer a realistic thing to imagine.

But it wasn’t directly because they were encouraging me to. I had already chosen my career. But anyway, once I started law school, I just totally loved it.

Angus (17:00.782)
So a couple of points came up for me as we were talking or as you were talking. One is that, the realization about lawyers, had your career is a lot like mine up to this point. I got into, I did a little bit of expert.

Lloyd (17:18.62)
Well, and I can tell that you stopped surveying around the same time as I did.

Angus (17:24.3)
Yeah. And, on the, on the law, I was doing just a little bit of, expert witnessing and I came to the realization that I know you quite a bit more than, about land law than the lawyers involved or even the judge. They weren’t not used to questions of, unrentenesements and so, so forth.

Angus (17:52.066)
And also, the realization you had about lawyers that they’re just normal people, I guess we could say. I think a lot of surveyors have that, and also with architects, that you have to check the work and get into that. Another question maybe you can answer for me, and this is a digression, but there is a quotation in a land surveying book that affected me quite a bit, and it was…

Lloyd (18:18.012)
Hmm.

Angus (18:20.822)
It is not enough to be correct. One must also persuade. And I thought I was in Curtis Brown or maybe Walt Robillard, but I haven’t been able to find it when I go back to it. Did that ring a bell?

Lloyd (18:34.328)
It does not, you saying it brings to mind some ideas about it because it is an interesting quote. And it does say something that we can talk about, about the difference between a lawyer and a surveyor. So I take that, if you say that you read it in Curtis Brown or a text like that,

Angus (18:53.25)
Yeah, please.

Lloyd (19:03.79)
I imagine that what they were trying to get at was that it’s important to be able to explain. And that’s absolutely important. And explain what a surveyor does and why it’s important. And I mean, this gets back to when I was on the phone with those real estate transactional attorneys that ended up not impressing me or not frightening me about being a lawyer.

I called it the checklist mentality. They would talk to me on the phone, both of us looking at the ALTA survey that I had prepared, and they were just running through things that they were missing, and they were things that were like, I suppose a comma can be important, but it was that sort of thing, and it got at the placement of something.

And it made me think, do you even know what this map is really showing? Or are you just, you know, stuck to your checklist to make sure that it contains these, you know, various elements? Because an ALTA survey has substance to it. It’s there for a purpose.

It’s there to show you something and to learn something about the property. And I didn’t get any questions that indicated that the lawyer was really grasping that. So in that sense, I think that the quote you mentioned, it’s important for a surveyor to be able to explain what they do. And I advise people about this all the time.

We should say, I don’t do in my legal practice, I don’t do surveying law or boundary law. We can talk about cases that I’m involved in or tasks that I’m involved in where it touches on that. And that’s where my experience comes in. But I’m not daily dealing with boundaries. But when I do, a lot of times what happens is I get calls from other lawyers that I know asking me to recommend a surveyor.

Lloyd (21:26.074)
So I do have sort of a stable of people that I enjoy or that I know do good work. But I always tell surveyors, you’ve got to really clarify the scope of work with the client because I’ve seen it too many times where, let’s say at a building department counter or something like that, the plan checker will say, you need a survey.

And then the homeowner who doesn’t even know what that means, hires a surveyor and says, I’m told I need a survey. The surveyor doesn’t, at times, doesn’t, or in the worst case, doesn’t clarify what that involves, what that means. Is it a topo survey? Do you want stakes in the ground? What do you want? Do you want to show the house or the fence in relation to the boundary. And then the surveyor does a boundary survey, surveys the block, surveys the lot, and gives the homeowner a plat showing a rectangle with bearings and distances, and that’s it.

When in fact, maybe what the plan checker was looking for was, is the ADU or garage or shed that you’re gonna build; is it going to respect the five-foot setback line? Maybe that’s what was needed and the end product is not reflecting that at all. survey or land survey, it’s an ambiguous term. It can mean so many things. You mentioned an architect. an architect is designing a house on a huge lot and the architect needs contour lines, they may not need a boundary at all.

They may be able to do that work just based on the contours in the middle of the property. So that’s how I take it.

Angus (23:28.12)
Sure.

Lloyd (23:28.686)
I don’t know, persuade is a very loaded word. where I think that that we have to be careful about that is that the difference between a lawyer and a surveyor is that the lawyer does persuade. The surveyor is an objective fact finder. And I was taught that surveyor has a quasi-judicial role, meaning that when the surveyor is hired by the homeowner to survey one property line, the neighbor gets a free survey on that line. It doesn’t mean that the surveyor is an advocate for their client. So, persuade then is, like I say, it’s a loaded word. It sounds like I would be careful about a surveyor using it in the sense that, I’m going to be persuasive on behalf of my client. It may be bad news that you deliver to your client.

Angus (24:36.526)
Sure. I would respond, I agree with you, but also, know, vast majority of, cadastral surveying doesn’t actually pass to a surveyor or a lawyer at any point in the process. Ideally, it doesn’t,

get reviewed by a, it doesn’t come to trial. And in those cases, in, you for example, the methods and reasoning statements that appear in many maps, there is not persuading necessarily, but teaching or explaining in ways that convince, I think is part of the job.

Lloyd (25:21.657)
I concur.

Angus (25:22.894)
Thank you, counselor. Another, you were mentioning ALTAs. I know my experience with ALTA surveying. I was a survey manager at MSA Professional Services in the Midwest. Our deal with ALTAs was that I had to, I felt compelled to edit and rewrite some aspects of the ALTA certification.

And the one that I remember quite well was some of the statements amounted to a declaration that the surveyor could see underground. Um, and I couldn’t live with that. And there was, um, you know, it was a little contentious until I convinced our clients that wanted altas that, uh, we couldn’t legally do this and they were going to have you. I wasn’t going to take their liability, um, for things that I couldn’t see, but.

Lloyd (25:59.781)
Right.

Lloyd (26:17.198)
Sure. that’s liability is a legal issue.

Angus (26:21.58)
Yeah. I feel pretty solid on your transition. Let’s talk about some of your columns. The one that where we first started talking, I think I reached out to you on LinkedIn. sure, please. Please.

Lloyd (26:28.252)
You

Lloyd (26:38.202)
Wait, may I say one more thing about the transition that occurred to me, which is that when I made this decision to go to law school, I started in 99. I did not have the end result fixed in my mind. I thought I want to go to law school, I want to learn to be a lawyer, and I’m going to keep an open mind about what interests me.

If it turns out to be criminal law and I end up being a public defender or whatever, I was open to that. But then I just naturally went in the direction of property law. So, you know, it’s in my blood. And then when I, my first job, which really kind of clearly set my career in motion was that was,

working for big firm and it was land use. So that was working for developers and advocating for development projects, advocating in front of local governments, planning commissions, city councils. And that’s just the area that I was comfortable with. I knew the development world.

all of my field work, you know, seeing subdivisions go up from either farm fields or woods in Illinois and just seeing it from beginning to end, seeing the utilities, the infrastructure laid down, all of that gave me just a view of that world that was very helpful in that career. That’s the, so that

Land use is really more my area than any kind of boundary dispute or real estate transactions. I don’t do those. Now I work for the local governments. So I’m still doing the same kind of planning and zoning advising. now instead of, I always say about developers is that

Lloyd (29:04.61)
And, you know, I have colleagues on all sides of the aisle and it’s all good, it’s all important that everyone have good representation. But I always say about developers, when you work for a developer that’s trying to build a project, there’s only one outcome for them, which is what they want. Whereas when you work for

On the other side, for the local government that’s going to approve that project or not, the outcome is uncertain. It’s going to be whatever’s best for the community. So sometimes it works in favor of the project and sometimes it doesn’t. And I’ve just found that’s the second half the last 10 years of my career has been on that side. And it’s just a better fit for me.

Angus (30:01.742)
Well, my impression is that that niche in the legal profession is underserved, that there really aren’t that many people who are comfortable with boundary and zoning and so forth. Would you say there’s a shortage of expertise in?

Lloyd (30:11.932)
Hmm.

Lloyd (30:26.204)
Hard for me to say. All I can say is I do feel appreciated. So particularly, I’ll say something else about how being a surveyor has affected my being a lawyer, apart from the knowledge base, if you will, is I’m very comfortable with civil engineers. So because I worked with them throughout my surveying career.

So when I’m meeting with city public works people, they tell me, you don’t sound like a lawyer, you don’t feel like it doesn’t feel like a lawyer talking with you. And, you know, I kind of like I I say, I know the the beginning to end process of development. that’s just something that’s been very helpful. And I guess I don’t have the ego of a lawyer, I’m told.

Angus (31:36.952)
You don’t strike me as having… Although you style yourself Esquire, I think. What’s the technical meaning of that appellation? Or honorific.

Lloyd (31:51.441)
I don’t know the etymology of it or why it is. It’s just a thing, I guess. So yeah, that’s what we call ourselves. Yeah, don’t know why. The only alternative I know of is people use the initials JD, which is your, that’s your degree. And so I know,

Angus (32:02.21)
Well, get on it. Well.

Lloyd (32:19.992)
A few people who went to law school, got their JD, they will put that after their name, but they never passed the bar, so they’re not permitted to practice law. And so they apparently are not allowed to use Esquire. Those are the only two ways I know of, or just attorney at law, something like that.

Angus (32:43.808)
I have long thought that surveyors need an honorific and I propose agrimensore from the Roman term.

Lloyd (32:52.604)
Now, how do you spell that?

Angus (32:55.534)
M-E-N-S-O-R, the Roman surveyors and boundary specialists. I don’t think I’m going to win that one, Lloyd.

Lloyd (33:07.599)
You don’t have to be a… Isn’t there something called MENSA? Like the… What are those? Yeah, yeah, what’s that? Is that related? Okay. Okay.

Angus (33:13.826)
The Genius Organization? Not at all. I think that’s an acronym. And I’ll brag a bit, I technically qualify for MENSA.

Lloyd (33:26.948)
Alright, I believe it.

Angus (33:28.68)
And let’s talk a little bit about.

Lloyd (33:30.428)
And there’s no one on this call can dispute that.

Angus (33:33.902)
And I’ve, well, let’s pass on that. And I’d like to talk about a particular column of yours, article, an American Surveyor. And this is the one where I, we started talking, I think I reached out to you on LinkedIn, that’s property law and the transformation of Seattle’s terrain.

Lloyd (33:47.558)
place.

Lloyd (33:59.997)
Yeah, I like that one too.

Angus (34:00.994)
which was, was a fine meditation on how the actual land changes according to boundary. Maybe could you just take us through it, what that article was about, why you were drawn to write it, and what do you think some of the conclusions you reached from that article?

Lloyd (34:18.296)
Sure, sure. I think I remember you also commented on LinkedIn that you, something like you’re a sucker for these steady leaders of the, you know, the progressive era or something like that.

Angus (34:37.742)
Oh yeah, they were heroes, they were on mountain banks, were behind the scenes, were pushing deals, kind of Trump-like in a way. yeah, certainly I have a sneaking admiration for the people who got things done. Also, I should mention my father was a civil engineer and so I also have a love of working with civil engineers.

Lloyd (34:49.87)
Mm-hmm.

Lloyd (35:01.07)
Huh.

Lloyd (35:06.076)
I mean you could call that ilk of man, I think they were all men, Mulholland.

Angus (35:13.471)
yes. I think we’re talking. Yeah, for sure.

Lloyd (35:19.336)
Mulholland in Los Angeles and you talk about, if it’s the right word, skullduggery. You know, the whole story of the movie Chinatown, bringing water to Los Angeles. And in that movie, they use the fictional name Mul-Ray, but they’re referring to Mulholland. And Los Angeles, of course, brought its water from a lake up north called Owens Lake.

And the expression that they say is, Los Angeles stole the water, but they stole it fair and square because it was all about buying water rights without anyone knowing that we were going to take it all. So yeah, that’s the type of person that we’re talking about. So the idea for that article came from visiting Seattle my first time, which was just a few years before.

Angus (36:05.858)
Hmm.

Lloyd (36:19.568)
And I took the tour of, it’s called something like Seattle Underground. It’s a walking tour. And because of the change in the contours, the shape of the land, cutting down hills and filling up the tidelands and the shoreline, there were buildings there before, before that was done. So what you end up having in Seattle is buildings that where the first floor is now an underground basement. And what they were showing us in the tour is that these became, and this was done early in the century. So in the 1920s, those now underground rooms and corridors connecting them were some of them became speakeasies. These were like underworld and more senses of the word. So it was a fascinating tour. Anyone can take it in Seattle. And then they showed us a photograph. It’s easily found on the internet. I did not include it in the article because, well first let me describe it.

It shows pinnacles of land across the landscape where the hills had been cut away to flatten. The whole point was, the whole point of the article is that this surveyor and engineer named Thompson, he decided and envisioned that in order for the city to grow and develop and become a compete with the great cities of the country, it needed to be more level. And this was before the automobile. So it was very troublesome, difficult, took energy for a horse-drawn cart to go up and down hills.

Lloyd (38:44.412)
And it just disrupted the commercial workings of the city. So his idea was cut down the hills, fill in the tied lands to gain more land, and create a level commercial area of the city. So the photograph shows in the process of cutting down these hills, they left certain properties with houses on top or buildings on top, left them in place. So they ended up being these isolated pinnacles.

You can see if I recall in the photograph two or three of these. And some writers called them spite, S-P-I-T-E, spite hills, suggesting that the landowner was so against this change to the city that they refused to give permission to cut down their property. And so they were left isolated, you know, maybe a hundred feet in the air, unable to, you know, drive to their house or whatever. So that was a very captivating photograph and it made me want to learn more about it.

Like I say, I did not include it in the article because the description of or the name ascribed to it, Spite Hills, turns out to be not true. And that in fact, it is true that in order to cut down that land, the government had to have the permission of the owners, the buy-in, the participation of the owners.

But it wasn’t that those owners, at least as I’ve read, it wasn’t that they were refusing to do it out of spite. It was that they couldn’t be reached. So that says a lot about boundaries, that there’s a respect for property law. You don’t just plow away private property. In our country, we respect private property.

So that required the buy-in from those property owners. So that’s how I learned about Seattle and wanted to write about it. Anytime I write about history in these articles, I’m not the historian. So I always include a bibliography and I always attribute my quotes because I’m the learner and I’ve learned it from these books that I’m reading.

And I want the reader to have, you know, further reading for interested readers so they know where to turn to if they’ve at all found it interesting and want to learn more. But again, I’m just the explainer. I try to write it in a way that maybe people don’t know about this particular aspect of history. I’m sure many know and many others don’t. So I’m the explainer.

Angus (42:08.066)
And I think you succeed in that. There’s a term from the article that maybe you could go into a little deeper for us and that’s zone of benefit. Where did that come up and how exactly was that determined?

Lloyd (42:18.203)
Right.

Lloyd (42:23.62)
And it definitely touches on property boundaries. So that’s a legal issue. And again, when I say that I like explaining the law to non-lawyers, I sometimes think to myself that I’m writing for someone like me when I started out as a surveyor. And maybe there’s some surveyor who will pick up the magazine in the break room at their company. And I want them to read my articles and if it sparks an interest,

I want them to know this stuff is understandable. This is not, you know, what do call, sacred knowledge. Being a lawyer, it’s not sacred knowledge where only the, you know, select few can even, you know, grasp it. So that’s who I’m writing for and in this case, the legal concept was, what was that called?

It’s the assessment. Okay, back to it. Special assessment. So that’s the legal concept is a special assessment. And a special assessment is a way that the local government can get the funds to do a public works project. The classic example is they’re going to replace the sewer line or the water line in the street in front of your house.

Lloyd (44:08.186)
you may be in a big city and the rest of the city doesn’t want to pay for that improvement that is only going to benefit certain properties. And those properties are definitely going to benefit. They’re going to see an increase in their property value because they have a new sewer line or a new water line serving their property.

It might be a case of transitioning from septic tanks to sewer lines. So it’s going to have a clear demonstrable financial benefit to those properties. So a special assessment rather than the city paying for it out of the general fund, which means that everyone in the city is paying for it, the city will charge those properties their proportional share of that improvement.

And so part of determining which properties are going to get assessed is determining this so-called zone of benefit. And part of the thrust of the article was to show just how frustrating that was, because this is not a sewer line, this is changing the grade so that your neighborhood is more flat. So if that’s the case, then it’s not just benefiting the properties that are going to get leveled.

It’s going to benefit the ones beyond because cars will be, porous strong carriages will be able to reach those properties beyond. So in this case of Seattle, it was, frustrating to say the least and what I try to convey in the cases that that I referred to and quoted from is just how frustrating it was and that there was a sense of courts just kind of throwing up their hands that you know we can only do the best we can do it’s just not a it’s not a scientific equation.

Angus (46:31.062)
I guess the issue there was that if you’re making a city, sizable region, flatter, every one of the city in theory benefits from less grade. But some people were.

Lloyd (46:47.868)
That’s right. At that time, because of the difficulty of climbing a grate, then the end of the article suggests that there’s a counter-argument there, which is the beauty of the natural landscape.

Angus (47:07.822)
But then if you’re a homeowner with a very low site or a very high site or you’re at the end of a long grade, in theory you benefit more because you take your wagon up that grade or down that grade more often. So should you pay more for the work? I could see how it would get very complicated.

Lloyd (47:30.063)
Exactly.

Angus (47:38.284)
Lloyd, thank you. I’m looking through your articles and columns and there’s a lot we could talk about. My eye was caught by… Well, very quickly if you want to… Yeah.

Lloyd (47:47.463)
Pick one, Angus. Hey Angus, you do cut in and out just now. It’s been fine this whole hour. But I wonder, could it be me playing with the chord?

Angus (48:04.622)
You have been cutting in and out and I think it’s a connection and I’m not too worried about it. I’ll tell you why because the whole point of being in Riverside is that audio is being recorded as we speak on your computer or phone and there’ll be a little bit of upload time. And so I think that we’re experiencing a Wi-Fi connection issue which is not in the recording.

Lloyd (48:10.618)
Okay.

Angus (48:32.846)
So I’m not too worried about it and we’ll cut out this conversation and so forth. But to return to what your articles, one that caught my eye was Exhibition of Joe Mora’s Whimsical Map Delights. It reminded me for one thing of, yeah, I was reminded of crazy cat. Do you know that old cartoon, set in the Four Corners country? You would probably like that just as much, especially with the Utah issue. I’ll email you with some of the basics on that, but tell us about Joe Morris.

Lloyd (49:19.216)
So that one, actually got permission from Marc, Marc Cheves, before writing that one because I realized now I’m straying away from property law. And the only connection with the surveying community is the love of maps. So, and Marc was totally on board. And when I remember showing those Joe Mora maps to my wife, Paula, and she said, this is going to be pure eye candy for the magazine. So I did not know this person before. And my office in downtown LA is right across the street from the Central Library.

It’s a beautiful Art Deco building, if you ever come visit. And of course, I get the email newsletters from the LA Public Library and when I saw this one, they talked about, it talked about an exhibition at the library, and I thought, wow, maps, I gotta go see that; and so the article is a review of that exhibition.

Then I did some research, read some books on the figure himself, Joe Mora, who’s really interesting guy and he was a sculptor and an artist and sculptor, painter, and then map maker; and these maps are a particular genre called pictorial maps. And so I read up a little on the history of pictorial maps and it’s the kind of thing we all know from popular culture and from being kids.

It just brings to mind comic strips and a pictorial map is conveying information on the map in pictorial form. So any map that has little images or symbols or things like that. I think I quote in the article, one of the sources that I read, it goes way back to like beyond here, there be dragons or something like that. mean, those types of illustrations in medieval maps and you can even go farther back than that for examples.

But Joe Moore’s maps are very, like the title says, very whimsical and the style is a lot like comic books and in the article we reproduce Grand Canyon,parts of California and various maps that he produced. He actually did this later in life. Like I say, most of his career, he was a sculptor and a painter. And we’re talking about the time period around, again, the turn of the century and the early 1900s when he lived.

I guess he was producing maps into the 40s I believe for sure he did a map of California after World War two. I’m not sure how far beyond that He lived but that’s the period so that’s the period of there’s a lot of popular culture and the article talks about like Auto clubs did maps like this and You know, it’s the kind of thing you see and on like diner placemats and things like that. We’ve all seen them, but maybe we didn’t know that they had a name, pictorial maps.

Angus (53:20.61)
You are describing a cartographic or surveying adjacent figure. And very interesting to me as a, know, I’ve drawn a lot of maps, so have you. And there is occasionally room for a flourish in a cadastral mapping. And it’s always appreciated. I…

Lloyd (53:28.198)
There you go.

Lloyd (53:41.081)
Exactly.

Lloyd (53:46.799)
And particularly if it need not be to scale. So I remember we had a family event where I had people coming in from out of town who weren’t necessarily familiar with Los Angeles. And I drew something before I knew that there was such a thing as a pictorial map.

But I did have examples in my head that I’d seen elsewhere where I just drew the major freeways and drew a little airplane where the airport is and little symbols of where the restaurant, where the hotel is, all that sort of thing. And that was a pictorial map. It was not to scale.

Angus (54:30.19)
And I have done much the same. Also, just to loop back briefly to asking Marc Cheves, also a surveyor and the editor of American Surveyor Magazine. I have been in the same, absolutely, and a few words in favor of him. He’s let me talk about conspiracy theory, Kabbalah, write about urban planning.

He’s been very generous in letting me go pretty far afield from a trade journal article, you might think. Very supportive and I’ve certainly appreciated him. Lloyd, I think we’re going to wrap it up now. This has been great and I’m seeing some articles that I’d like to get back to you maybe in a future podcast. For example, waterways and Earth days looks great. Roads.

Lloyd (55:32.166)
…talk about changing the landscape. It’s called geoengineering.

Angus (55:37.635)
Yeah, which ties in with conspiracy theory as well. We could talk about that. Roads that come up short. So maybe we’ll speak again and I look forward to that. But for now, is there any closing statement you would like or have you got a current project that you’re thinking of? And what’s the survey? Where do they go if they want your services as a lawyer?

Lloyd (56:06.704)
Well, Googling my name always finds me because I’m sure much like you, there aren’t many of us out there. Exactly. So, I mean, if you just Google my last name, you’ll get my family members, but there’s not that many of us. So that’s very easy to reach me. And I’m sure my firm’s website pops right up.

Angus (56:15.638)
Yeah, I think there’s only one Angus stocking.

Lloyd (56:36.528)
There’s that. And yeah, I can’t think of anything else to add. So it’s been a pleasure talking to you.

Angus (56:49.826)
Yes, and bye for now. And Lloyd, I’m about to start, I’m about to end the recording, but don’t hang up just yet. There’s a little upload, a few seconds. So right now I’m gonna go stop.