DNYED: The Vanity License Plates PennDOT Rejected

Illustrations by Alyse Moyer

Over at PennDOT HQ in Harrisburg, it’s somebody’s job to sift through the thousands of vanity license plate applications the agency receives annually to see if the requests violate any of PennDOT’s 16 rules. Those rules include: no lewdness or vulgarity, no sexual innuendo, no racial or religious epithets, and no references “to excretory functions,” which apparently needed its own rule. Here are some of our favorites:

EPH-EWE

It’s amazing how many ways people have found to say F.U. We tip our hats to this appropriation of Philadelphia’s phavorite digraph. Other things drivers wanted to eff: CANCER and OPEC.

VEGANAF

Tofu lovers, unite! An application was also put in for FANAGEV, but the PennDOT censors can read backwards — just like the rest of us.

8-BALL

Was this denied because of the drug reference? Or was BALL the offending element? Maybe this person just loves pool.

ASSMAN

We would have been deeply distraught had someone not tried to sneak this Seinfeld reference through.

DOCVINO

No references to booze allowed. Nor drugs. Nor did EL CHAPO make the cut.

STOLEIT

These PennDOT people really have no sense of humor.

Here are 300-plus more funny, strange and just plain odd requests that were rejected by Pennsylvania’s Department of Transportation.

Published as “Vanity, Denied” in the January 2018 issue of Philadelphia magazine.