From my brother who saw this in San Diego: the upper section of the frame says “HELLO” the bottom says “My name is Inigo Montoya” and the license plate says YKMFPTD
Saw one today on an otherwise nondescript late model pickup truck: I B WILL.
The guy driving was a plausible age to be a William.
Not too exciting but a bit clever.
Oh I like that one.
I saw a very surprising one today. Unfortunately circumstances didn’t permit me taking a pic, so you’ll have to take my word for it.
Tesla Model 3 with MF KING.
I saw a 4Runner last night with the license plate 4WANDER
An old (late-'80s/early-'90s) full-sized Ford sedan pulled in front of me on the freeway this morning. (Funny-looking car. From behind it looked like all of the tires were too narrow, and the rear window seemed a little too large. Oh, and the stuffed animals the guy had on the back shelf looked funny too.) Anyway, his license plate was IMAHERO.
Some 33-ish years ago I spotted one obviously owned by a chemistry student: PANDNH4.
Weird. Today in the car I was playing some of my music that I haven’t heard in a long time. I was listening to Axel F by Harold Faltermeyer when I pulled up behind a truck that had the plate “AXELL”.
This means something!
I wish I could find the ‘This means something!’ clip from Closet Cases of the Nerd Kind.
That’s exactly what I was quoting! I didn’t expect anyone to recognize it.
Yesterday I wished I could find a clip from The Brothers Grunt. ‘Let’s celebrate!’
Yesterday here in Florida I saw an Alabama plate that was A0A0BN8 or AOAOBN8.
I worked on variations of “I owe, I owe, …” and “…binate” (like part of a chemical name) for a couple minutes as I followed this too-clever driver down the road.
Then I noticed that along the bottom below the main numbers it said “FLEET”. Pretty well telling me this was just a consecutive random number among many. Oops. In other news, I saw Santa’s face in a cloud last week.
Way back in the day when California first started offering vanity plates a columnist for The Los Angeles Times would sporadically have mention ones spotted in his column, much like this thread. He got behind an auto sporting 714 LBS and got curious what it meant. Weight lifter or circus fat lady, maybe? Perhaps a glimpse of the driver might give a clue so with some effort he managed to get alongside and glanced over.
No help; the driver was an ordinary-looking bloke. Then it dawned on the columnist the plate was just a plain ol’ regular issue one.
I once had a Suburban with the license plate SNW 365. Regular Oregon issue, not a vanity plate. Many people thought it was a vanity plate and that I was one of those freaks that wanted snow all year.
I ended up selling it for scrap after some spectacular mechanical failures; I really wish I had saved one of the plates before I got rid of it.
The fact that 714 was then the sole telephone area code for all of outlying southern California beyond central Los Angeles which was 213 also offered a host of possible explanations for the custom plate. 714 plus 213 pretty well defined the LA Times’ subscription catchment area.
When I read your post and got to the plate number my mind jumped right into the area code idea and tried to parse the “LBS” part into a city name, a catchy slogan, something about the phone company, etc.
ETA: [silly story / aside]
For some reason I can remember the license plates of my first couple of cars which had been my parents’ cars when I was a kid. But none of the umpteen plates since.
My post just triggered the memory that my first car when I started driving, which my parents bought new when I was ~7, was California NHS 954. And now, ~58 years later, I live in what’s predominantly the 954 area code in Florida. I’ve gone a long way to come full circle. Sorta. Hmm. “I’ll take meaningless coincidences for $200, Alex”.
I saw one on a white Tesla yesterday: WHJLYBN
‘What ho, Jelly Bean!’ ?
‘White House jelly bean’?
I don’t know.
I think it’s just “white jelly bean”; no deeper than that. They do have that plump jelly-bean look. And the thing is white.
Most folks with personalized plates are not creative geniuses. They’re the folks you see in line at the DMV; you know, Murricans!.
It didn’t occur to me that WH would mean ‘white’, but your guess does seem likely to be true.
I used to like seeing a blue Volvo when I lived in L.A. Its licence plate was BLU VOVO.
Someone around here had a cream colored beemer with the plate CREME