licence plate showdown
dcdave permalink | categories: Florida, diversity, moving, state, tampa, transportationby dcdave @ 7:34 am
I finally got my Florida license plate after living here for 3 months.
Tommy has complained about the overwhelming number of license plates available to Floridians. He thinks there are just way too many. Good thing he doesn’t live in Virginia.
In Virginia, you can get almost anything on a tag. And I mean “anything.” Choices range from Sons of Confederate Veterans to simply Chesapeake Bay. Virginia brags of “approximately 180 special plates” for you to choose from. But some have very little to do with the Commonwealth of Virginia. For instance, you can get a Parrotheads specialty plate. Or even one for Florida State University. Yes - in Virginia.
Here in Florida, the choice is a little narrower, but boy is it a choice. Florida has 150 or so to choose from, probably due to limiting the college plates to institutions actually in Florida. So which tag did I get?
Did I want the manly shark, or the docile manatee? Somehow, after managing to look at all the custom plates for the hour that I was stranded on the 14th floor, I decided. I got cartoon animals. I ended up with the “Animal Friend” Spay and Neuter tag. I’ll be clear: the reason I got the tag is because I want my money to go to a good cause, not because I want cartoon cats and dogs on my license plate. I swear. My wife giggled when I brought it home.
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August 14th, 2006 at 9:07 am
Right now, I have a Choose Life and a UCF plate, but I would trade in either one if I could get a Sticks of Fire license plate.
August 14th, 2006 at 9:50 am
I was on the road vacationing up north, and I saw a Virginia license plate for Penn State University. I thought that they somehow modified it themselves with stickers and such, although it looked like it was all intact … and I racked my brain wondering if there was a Penn State campus in Virginia (which there isn’t).
Nice to know what that actually is about then.
August 14th, 2006 at 10:19 am
don’t get me started on Virginia license plates. far more annoying than the almost 200 different choices (even the one for Penn State as mentioned above) is large number of vanity plates. only $15 more expensive than a regular plate, vanity plates are everywhere in virginia, and almost all are inside jokes that leave you scratching your head.
August 14th, 2006 at 11:43 am
You can get a University of Alabama license plate in Tennessee, but you can’t get one in Florida. Still not worth moving up there, though. (Add your own “Hee Haw” music here.)
August 14th, 2006 at 12:24 pm
FSU plate in Virginia? Sounds about as incongruous as the plate for a fish we don’t have.
August 14th, 2006 at 12:34 pm
Isn’t the point of the college license plates to earn scholarship money for those colleges? That’s how it works in Ohio. You better believe we’re not throwing around foreign state schools on our plates.
Then again, I’ve lived here more than two years and I still have my Ohio plates. Though they do expire in a month.
Really, the only plates that get me riled up are the “Choose Life” ones. a) they are ugly as hell. they resemble the plates we force DUI offenders to use. b) the entire premise is offensive. We should not be spending state money to support one side of a political argument. I should have the right to drive with a “choose choice” plate, yet I don’t?
August 14th, 2006 at 12:45 pm
http://www.hsmv.state.fl.us/specialtytags/slpfaq.html#3
Here on the instructions on creating your own, good luck because it looks complicated. Offhand the website for the Choose Life tag looks like the money is spent on stuff pretty much everybody would be ok with, adoption agencies, maternity assistance and crap like that. At least their literature indicates they steer clear of the real lightning rod issues like contraceptives and abortion rights. But this is THEIR propaganda I am trusting of course.
August 14th, 2006 at 3:36 pm
Tim, the Choose Life plates are not nearly as ugly as the USF ones.
August 14th, 2006 at 5:18 pm
The old USF ones were hideous. The new ones are okay.
August 15th, 2006 at 12:38 am
I’m on my way back to Florida, and I saw a Virginia plate that had a No. 3 logo for whatever NASCAR driver that number represents.
Talk about vanity …
August 15th, 2006 at 1:39 am
If anyone at the USF Alumni dept reads this, please get off your butts and get a Virginia vanity plate like UF and FSU and yes even UCF. I have tried to contact you about this but I get no response. MacDill > Pentagon = USF > NOVA. Help me out! Get the Bulls into Virginnie!