How vanity license pl8s reflect LA’s culture of showmanship

In LA, exhibitionists are everywhere.

So are their vanity license plates.

Every day, across the City of Angels, motorists sit in traffic and mull over the messages: “WYA OMW,” “2 NRVUS,” “1RNG 2RL,” “CHZ PL8,” “2BCONTD.”

Thanks to the exhibitionists, any parking lot can serve as an adventure in wordplay.

It’s a puzzle, a respite, a bright spot on congested LA streets.

Some plates are clever, some explanatory and still others are baffling non sequiturs. They all say something about this megalopolis and the people who call it home.

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Cars have long been vehicles for Angeleno self-expression, ever since the automobile’s rise to popularity in the 1920s and the explosion of car ownership that came with post-World War II prosperity and suburbanization.

Whether it was buying a Cadillac with fins or customizing your car to be a lowrider, what you drove became as personal as your signature, an extension of the clothes you chose to wear on your back.

California introduced personalized vanity plates in 1970, allowing for a whole new world of personalization — and showmanship.

Despite California’s being pricey ($50-$100 per year in DMV fees), the Golden State boasts the most vanity plates of all the states.

There are 36 million licensed vehicles in California, and 1 million of those have vanity plates, leading the US in sheer numbers of personalized plates.

Meanwhile, license plates in general are in flux. California has nearly exhausted its 7-character sequence, and the DMV is preparing for a new sequence to last for an expected 40 years.

But even if the standard code is changing, you can always choose your own adventure with a vanity plate.

The California DMV receives 250,000 vanity plate applications per year, but officials are pretty picky.

In order to get past the DMV, you do have to choose 1) a phrase that has not yet been taken and 2) a sequence deemed inoffensive to the DMV reviewers, what the DMV calls conforming to “good taste and decency.”

That means: Sexual innuendos, drug references, hate speech and racism are not tolerated.

But, as this is more of a “you know it when you see it” kind of rule, occasionally, some things slip past.

Case in point: Robert Heppler’s NXIVM plate. The marketing official explained the plate was a “humorous” reference to the now-defunct self-help cult once active in LA, whose cult leader Keith Raniere sexually assaulted his victims and branded them with his initials.

Raniere is now serving life in prison.

Wisely, Heppler eventually decided to change his plate.

And sometimes vanity plates backfire and personalization isn’t worth the world of trouble they unleash.

In 1979, an Angeleno named Robert Barbour registered his plate as “No Plate.”

He thought this was pretty funny, until he realized that every time an officer charged a vehicle without a plate a fine, the bill was directed to him.

There’s also a ridiculous aftermarket for vanity plates — providing needless economic speculation.

Vanity plates can be transferred between registrants. This makes keying in their name, like buying up a particular web domain, a new form of investment.

Recently, The California Post reported a “USC” plate went for sale, with an eyebrow-raising asking price of $675,000.

The eventual buyer better love the Trojans with all his or her heart — and all their savings.

Members of The California Post community are license plate exhibitionists, too.

The plate of one of our freelance lifestyle columnists, Liz Angeles, reads “5 ★ Handz,” reflecting her job as a massage therapist.

Meanwhile, our opinion editor, Joel Pollak, is another showman. His vanity plate reads, “CA POST.”

I congratulate my boss on his successful DMV representation of our entire publication, but I can’t say I want to pursue the same type of notoriety myself.

License plates are like tattoos for your cars. They’re stenciled into your paperwork for the life of your vehicle, a sequence that holds so much weight in car-dependent California.

It’s like stenciling a monarch butterfly on your lower back forever, lest you opt for the laser. For the same reason I’ve never gotten a tattoo, I’ve never pursued a vanity plate.

I’m not sure I like any one phrase enough to emblazon it on my soul — I mean, my driving record. And while I might be an exhibitionist in words, in traffic I prefer some relative anonymity.

But I do like some degree of self-expression on my vehicle.

I have a compromise.

License plate frames represent an affordable alternative.

My current one says “Dodgers Back-to-Back Champs.”

That’s too long to fit in seven characters, anyway.

If I grow tired of it, I can change it out.

And if the Dodgers make the three-peat — I know which one I’ll replace it with.

Harrison Blackman is an editorial assistant for The California Post.