Personlized License Plates

you have to go to the link to see what the first photo they posted is, I refuse to repost it...I cannot believe I live in that state. I live inside the beltway, I am protected from the rednecks...(that's what my students say)

The Vainest Drivers of Them All? - AOL News

The Vainest Drivers of Them All?

By DENA POTTER,AP

Posted: 2007-11-12 15:30:14

Filed Under: Nation News

RICHMOND, Va. (Nov. 11) - URSOVAIN, Virginia.

You, too, New Hampshire, Illinois, Nevada and Montana.

A state-by-state survey of the popularity of vanity license plates has found that car and truck owners in Virginia are the vainest of them all.

Out of the 9.3 million personalized plates on the roads of America, about one in 10 are in Virginia, according to rankings provided to The Associated Press by the American Association of Motor Vehicle Administrators.

That's 16 percent of the plates issued by Virginia. New Hampshire came in second with nearly 14 percent. Illinois had about 13.4 percent, but that amounted to nearly 1.3 million plates, the most of any state.

"If you've got 9.3 million people across the U.S. sporting vanity plates, you've got a cultural phenomenon," AAMVA spokesman Jason King said.

Texas had the fewest, with only about a half percent of drivers personalizing their plates.

Kathy Carmichael drives around with the plate COFENUT, although she is down from eight to 10 cups of java a day to just three.

"It's a personality thing," said Carmichael, 58, a real state agent in Mechanicsville. "You get to know something about the person in front of you or who passes you."

Stefan Lonce calls it "minimalist poetry in motion" - telling a story in eight or fewer characters.

Lonce - author of the upcoming book "LCNS2ROM-License to Roam: Vanity Plates and the Stories they Tell" - worked with AAMVA to survey vehicle licensing agencies in each state.

"I think a lot of people have stories to tell and they really want pieces of those stories out there," said Lonce, who admits he initially thought it was silly for people to spend extra money to personalize their license plates.

Ion Bogdan Vasi, an assistant sociology professor at Columbia University, calls people who personalize their plates "the narcissistic-materialist poets of the iGeneration."

"Most people buy personalized plates simply because they want to tell the world they are special," Vasi said in an e-mail. "They wrote an ode to themselves and they want to share it with everybody on the highway."

Some plates are cryptic, like Brittany Diaz' EN PWANT. It's a reminder of the summer when she studied ballet in New York and her French teacher pronounced the "en pointe" style of dance as "en pwant."

"Most ballerinas get it, and those who don't dance I figured would be entertained because pwant is just a funny thing to say," said Diaz, 17, of Midlothian.

Others are personal, like those of Ally and Rudy Masry of Briarcliff Manor, N.Y. She donated a kidney to her husband in 2003, so her car has the tag DONOR and his reads DONEE.

Some offer quirky takes on professions, like EYEMAN and 2THDR. BYTE1 reflects the computer science degree held by Vonn Campbell of Greenville, S.C., but he also chose it "to provide a somewhat abrasive message to those individuals who follow too closely."

But why does Virginia have so many personalized plates?

"It's only $10. You can do it online with little effort. You can get a new one every month if you wanted to," said Benjamin Mace, a Virginia Beach Web designer who started CoolPl8z.com, where people post pictures of their vanity plates.

However, some other states are just as cheap. And Illinois has the largest total even though it charges $78 per year.

Copyright 2007 The Associated Press. The information contained in the AP news report may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or otherwise distributed without the prior written authority of The Associated Press. All active hyperlinks have been inserted by AOL.

2007-11-12 12:30:42

I have to add to this both my dad and stepmom have vanity plates and they are kind of funny my dads says TITUP (they didn't put a space between the t and it, for Tee it up) and my stepmoms says EMPTNST (emptynest, which is totally not true because now my sister and nephew live with them, but no one can ever figure hers out)

I also think California should be mentioned here

i got personalized plates for my 16th birthday. they say "T V T" it was a family thing for a while. A lot of people call me TVT. My cousins have the same sort of thing. Their first initial and VT. DVT, JVT, etc so we all got personalized plates for our birthdays

oh that's cute

Do all VA plates have that confederate artwork on them or is that by request for veterans? Just curious, never seen that before!

I have to admit, I have one... CHZDIVA - cheese diva

I grew up in WI so when I moved to California I used to get alot of *hit for my accent and the fact that I kept my WI license as long as I could (in a good way.. "hey, say boat and toast! and I'll let you in the bar") and one guy called me a diva as a joke (I'm the opp of diva... I fart and burp!) My license plate frame says "Wisconsin Chicks Rock".. ever see that Saturday Night Live skit.. well I had the plates before then.

Lol! That's funny! And I do actually remember noticing that a LOT of people had vanity plates in VA when I was there a couple years ago. I was with some friends from CA, visiting their parents and we all commented on the odd amount of vanity plates. I feel so vaildated by that article now! lol!!!

Along with personalized plates, Nevada also has hundreds of plates to choose from as well......its nuts! I don't have one myself but I always see a ton in Reno driving around so I can agree with the article!!

I don't have a vanity plate, but my brother got me a custom made license plate frame for Christmas a couple of years ago.

It says "Follow Me To WAFFLE HOUSE" in the yellow block lettering.

When I moved to SC, I fell in love with Waffle House and would go to 2 different ones regularly, and everyone on every shift knew me by face (since I was on TV back then) and name -- and they had my food on the grill as soon as they saw my car pull in. It was too funny.

FH and I still go there a lot and they still know me -- and I still have the license plate frame on my car, b/c it's so darn funny. I see people in my rear view mirror laughing at stop lights when they read it.