The book consists of renderings of these plates organized by topic, like Locals, Real Music Fans, and Utopians. Accompanying the plates are various vehicle-related photos from the National Archives.

Each section also contains “captions” in the form of found text—snippets including Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, Mike Davis' City of Quartz, and Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching—and original writing on topics like narrative descriptions of my favorite drives across the state, music I like listening to on these drives, and my favorite art you can see from a car in California. The title is borrowed from the Beach Boys song of the same name. Paul Morgan collaborated on the book design.

From the introduction:

If driving is freedom—especially in California, where the built environment is structured around the freeway system—a vanity plate is self-declaration in motion.

A personalized license plate is a bumper sticker without graphics: only letters, numbers, and a strict character count. It follows you off the car into the records of the State, insurance documents, and parking pay stations. Your essence, in seven characters (or less!).

Like many people, I love to snap photos of personalized plates I encounter in the wild. I started recording good ones, along with ideas for my own. I would visit the California DMV website for fun—typing in NOIDEA or IMSORRY to see if someone already registered it. If a plate was unavailable, it meant someone already had it—an accidental reverse lookup. While California doesn’t publish a list of in-use vanity plates, this method allowed me to infer which ones are on the road.

My notepad file turned into a spreadsheet, filled with whimsical entries like MENHUG or FLOWERS, jokey ideas like HAHAHA or PDFPAPI, identity markers like BURNER or TECHLIB, and serious declarations like NONUKES or YAYCOAL. I loved the contradictory images of someone paying $53 for a personalized plate like FREEGAN, a squatter with RENTFRE, or an anti-car advocate with the plate CARFREE (live the controversy!).

After years of typing plate ideas into the DMV website, I realized this collection of registered plates formed a taxonomy of Californians. Each one belonged to an embodied individual. Someone with hopes, dreams, and desires. Since personalized plates are a version of ourselves we choose to project into the world, what do these selections say about their owners? About California?

Listen to a soundtrack I put together to accompany the book.

Published by Current Editions -> Available

The book consists of renderings of these plates organized by topic, like Locals, Real Music Fans, and Utopians. Accompanying the plates are various vehicle-related photos from the National Archives.

Each section also contains “captions” in the form of found text—snippets including Octavia Butler's Parable of the Sower, Mike Davis' City of Quartz, and Ecodefense: A Field Guide to Monkeywrenching—and original writing on topics like narrative descriptions of my favorite drives across the state, music I like listening to on these drives, and my favorite art you can see from a car in California. The title is borrowed from the Beach Boys song of the same name. Paul Morgan collaborated on the book design.

From the introduction:

If driving is freedom—especially in California, where the built environment is structured around the freeway system—a vanity plate is self-declaration in motion.

A personalized license plate is a bumper sticker without graphics: only letters, numbers, and a strict character count. It follows you off the car into the records of the State, insurance documents, and parking pay stations. Your essence, in seven characters (or less!).

Like many people, I love to snap photos of personalized plates I encounter in the wild. I started recording good ones, along with ideas for my own. I would visit the California DMV website for fun—typing in NOIDEA or IMSORRY to see if someone already registered it. If a plate was unavailable, it meant someone already had it—an accidental reverse lookup. While California doesn’t publish a list of in-use vanity plates, this method allowed me to infer which ones are on the road.

My notepad file turned into a spreadsheet, filled with whimsical entries like MENHUG or FLOWERS, jokey ideas like HAHAHA or PDFPAPI, identity markers like BURNER or TECHLIB, and serious declarations like NONUKES or YAYCOAL. I loved the contradictory images of someone paying $53 for a personalized plate like FREEGAN, a squatter with RENTFRE, or an anti-car advocate with the plate CARFREE (live the controversy!).

After years of typing plate ideas into the DMV website, I realized this collection of registered plates formed a taxonomy of Californians. Each one belonged to an embodied individual. Someone with hopes, dreams, and desires. Since personalized plates are a version of ourselves we choose to project into the world, what do these selections say about their owners? About California?

Listen to a soundtrack I put together to accompany the book.

Published by Current Editions -> Available