Back in July, we contacted the Minnesota Department of Public Safety with a simple request: May we obtain a list of every personalized—or "vanity"—license plate name in the state, please? A PR rep informed Racket that such a request would run $200 in processing fees—two whole Accomplice-tier subscriptions! After hashing it out among the ownership group, we decided, yes, that expenditure would be prudent. (Hours earlier, we'd learned several of those words from this Wharton School-tier resource.)
Initially, our plan was to rank the most erudite witticisms. Ya know, stuff like BOOB69, 420DUDE, and LOV2QLT, the latter of which proved to be real. Em agreed to start at the bottom of the spreadsheet, I'd start at top, and we'd meet in the middle, having cataloged every plate out of the 9,318 that met our funniness threshold. Or... wait, no... what... fuck! Through a misreading that got past two degree-holding adults with jobs in the communications industry, we eventually discovered that the list of Minnesota vanity plates totaled 93,188 examples. The project was tabled; the field of data journalism wept.
Which brings us to this cold, holiday-shortened week. Yet again, we assembled in the C-suite of Racket Worldwide Enterprises, cigars dangling and boxy Valentino suits gleaming, to touch base about a synergistic EOD deliverable to maximize ROI and minimize bandwidth (re: the idling vanity plate problem). "I don't know... mail in a listacle?" floated one co-owner. Back-slaps and lunchtime martini clinks all around. Thus, "13 Things We Learned While Reading 93,188 Personalized MN License Plates" was born.
(If you're curious, click here to view all 93,188 plate names. We democratized this public data via our ill-spent dollars.)
"Car Guys" Love to Advertise Their Cars
6T6TBRD, 70CAMRO, 99PRWLR, etc. etc. etc. Those are just some of the many plates that signal to passersby that: This is the year, make, and/or model of my vehicle. All of that distracted from the pursuit of...
"Sophomoric Guys" Love 69 Jokes
Among them: 694EVER, 69BABY, 69CUGAR (this could be a car thing or a MILF thing), 69ER, 69FISH (yuck), 69HUGR, 69MEOW, 69SWNGR, 69TANG, 69TIME, 69TYME, and 69YNOT. Should funds from Minnesota's $7.2 billion surplus be devoted to halting this loophole that exposes our youth to such filth on highways and in parking all over the state? Yes.
"Beer Guys" Should Maybe Reconsider
If I'm a cop, the first swerving vehicle I'm pulling over is the one with plates that read BEERGUY. Or, simply, BEERS1. Or THEBEER. The folks driving FADED and HEMPLUV probably aren't getting the benefit of the doubt, either. Ditto for NOBLINKR.
Did a Mega-Fan of the Very Funny L.A. Comedy-Rock Band the Sloppy Boys Reference a Deep Cut?
Possibly the driver of IMTAKEN. Hit it, boys!
We Can Confirm the Presence of at Least Two Tolkien-Head Motorists
Gandalf the wizard didn't drive cars, though that is a fun visual. No, he rode the one-horsepower equine known as Shadowfax. Unclear what rides the owners of GAND4LF and GANDULF are pulling up to the club in.
Plates Span the Pretentious-Trashy Gamut
How much in common would the driver of AVNTGRD have with the dude behind the wheel of 8008IES? Same question, but applied to WALLST and DAWGMAN?
Satanism Abounds
Replace the wiper fluid with holy water ASAP in XSATANX and XX666XX!
But So Does Wholesomeness
You won't find 7GRDKDS sacrificing any goats—too many grandkids! Also hard to get mad at the messages behind NOCANCR and SPAYEM.
Sisqó and Master P Live Here... Does Shaggy?
We know "Thong Song" hitmaker Sisqó lives in Maple Grove. We learned as much in 2015, when ex-89.3 the Current blogger Jay Gabler wrote perhaps this generation's defining headline: "Sisqó lives in Maple Grove: 'No thongs out here!'" Another '90s rap star, Master P of "Make ’em Say Ugh" fame, made a similarly inexplicable home here in 2020, as documented in my longform City Pages profile. Is none other than Shaggy, the man behind "It Wasn't Me," also behind the wheel of Minnesota-registered vehicle WASNTME? Impossible to say.
All Blogs Must End
Our two-man vanity license plate investigate unit barely scraped the surface; feel free to keep digging for LOL-befitting gems. Or just look at the preliminary fruits of our abandoned labor:
694EVER
69BABY
69CUGAR
69ER
69FISH
69HUGR
69MEOW
69SWNGR
69TANG
69TIME
69TYME
69YNOT
6PKFISH
6SIX6
6T9ER
7GRDKDS
8008IES
ADOPTED
AHOTROD
ANGRY50
ANGRYBB
ARRRM8E
AVNTGRD
BABE
BACON8R
BALLET
BATMBIL
BEEFCAK
BEERGUY
BEERS1
BIGTOOL
BIGTV4
BL1NK82
BLAH
BOOBER
BOYOBOY
BUTCHY
CARBUYR
CATWIFE
CHONKER
CHUBBIE
CLOSET
COOLWIP
DADGANG
DADTHNX
DAGUMIT
DANFEST
DAWGMAN
DOMES
DSNTFIT
DUDESKI
EATTOFU
EGGROLL
EMOJIS
FADED
FROGGER
FTLONG
FUN
G4NDALF
G8KEEPR
G8PUMKN
GAND4LF
GANDULF
GETALFE
GIRTHY
GOD4ME
GOODBRO
GOTHP
GRFIELD
GRNBLT
HASHBRN
HEIST
HEMPLUV
HEYNOW
HOGHD
HOGLET
HOOBOY
HOTMIX
HOTSAX
HRDLUCK
IHATEIT
IIIOIII
ILCUTU
IMABRAT
IMHNGRY
IMSLUG
IMTAKEN
JOCKDOC
JOEDRT
LAZYN8
LOGDOG
LOV2QLT
MAN
MCNULTY
MGK
MMMMM
MONKCAR
MRSEED
MSMLM
NIPS
NO1MEME
NOBLINKR
NOCANCR
NOCRUST
NOON3R
NOTABMW
NUTS
OHHSICK
OHRATS
OKBOOMR
OLSPORT
OODLES
OOPSIE
PAPADAD
PIG
POOPSY
RAPTURE
RATHOG
RIBEYE
RUNCH
RUNINL8
SADFACE
SEXYIAM
SHREKK
SHUTUP
SKEET
SLOWISH
SOCOLD
SODAS
SPANK
SPAYEM
SPOOKYS
STINK
SUUBUWU
THEBEER
THECHAD
THEWOLF
TOESSSS
TOPDOG6
TOYMAN
TUAT1ME
TUNEZ
TV
TXDERMY
UNIQONE
WALLST
WARRANT
WASNTME
WATEVER
XECUTIV
XSATANX
XX666XX
YEAHMON
ZADDY
