Here’s a list provided to me by my friend Miss Fipi Lele showing the combinations that you’re not allowed to get when applying for a vanity license plate in New York State.
The reason many of these are banned is obvious to me, but some I just don’t get. For instance, why isn’t 157A allowed? Is it New York State penal code for a crime, the way “187” is the California penal code number for murder? Or does New York State have a beef with some organization called “ISTA” (Indiana State Teachers’ Association? International Safe Transit Association? ISTA, the opthalmic pharmaceutical company?)?
Image courtesy of Miss Fipi Lele.
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My guess about 157A is ###A is reserved for state vehicles like fire marshals or other civil servants with special parking privileges. They also have a problem with ##C, ##S, and ##JNY. The J may be for Justice.
Oh, and I so wanted to go buy a car, register in New York and get the vanity licence plate "kotex". Dammit, I guess I'll have to do Kleenex or something!
I'm wondering about "MEDAL", "HLLYWD99", "MCQUINN", "PLAY", and "QUEUE". Those all seem pretty harmless to me; am I hopelessly naive?
By the way, I like that your auto-smart-quote mechanism assumes I mean a double-prime at the end of 99 instead of a close quote.
They banned FIREBUG? What've they got against my favourite web development tool?
Someone must have had so much fun making this list.
They missed some alternate spellings, though (4nic8 seems to be allowed, for example, even though they went through tons of variations there.)
What are all those short numbers? Are they bus lines or something, and are they afraid people would get confused?
157A and kin look like New York state highway designations, though this doesn't explain why such strings must be prohibited: I hope (naively assume, even?) that every licensed driver is capable of distinguishing other vehicles from the roads themselves.
Ok, my favorite thing: 9INCHDK and 10INCHDK are not allowed: however, 1 through 8 and anything 11 to 99 is just dandy? Perhaps they are not allowed because Koch had 9INCHDK and Giuliani got 10INCHDK to upstage him? And, what about centimeters? 23CMDK is ok, plus you attract those exotic, metric-using foreigners! I'd opt for 9999INDK or possibly 9999MIDK -King of the Road, indeed.
SEEYOUNT? Someone needs to explain that one to me.
What if Robin Yount moved here (God forbid)?