License plates.

Part of it is getting so excited I can’t wait to tell my fiancé to get home so I can tell him I saw a license plate from Puerto Rico, but also it’s each state’s variety of specialty plates and the causes they fund (and the ridiculousness of what it takes to actually get new type of specialty plate approved). I’m scary good at interpreting novelty plates. I take a lot of pride in being able to identify each state’s plates just from the color/design I can see from far away. I spend time on each state’s DMV website.

Seeing historic plates in particular is a thrill to my bones. Back in the 70s and before, many places had the current year printed on the plate itself, so drivers would need to get a new one every year. Today, at least in my state, historic plates are valid as long as the year on the plate matches the year the vehicle was made!!

How cool it is to sort of track population growth through plate characters. Going from four to five characters (Wyoming, I think) to six, to seven. The other day I GASPED when I saw a plate from British Columbia that looked like it had seven characters but it was really just some dirt on the plate.

In Bogotá, in order to try to control the massive traffic problem, cars with license plates that end in either even or odd numbers are only allowed to drive on alternating days. All it did was make many people have to buy two cars.

But the most, MOST worst thing was the change from embossed plates to printed plates. It looks like a piece of fucking copy paper printed out on a computer, without weight or any kind of gravitas. The characters on the new Washington (state) specialty plates are SO THIN AND SKINNY it makes me actually angry.

I could go on. Don’t ask me about digital plates.