sup baby iron lady

a license plate love hate story

K.I.A.

Feb 20, 2025

TL; DR: read just the photos — only 34 words (but which took 36 months to “write”):

A “vanity plate” is a customized license plate you personally create for your vehicle. People use them to showcase their profession, favourite team, name, quirkiness, date-ability, and whether or not they graduated from high school — “DROPPOUT”, “EXPELLED” and similar bold declarations in BOLD hang on the back of more than a few supercars, (as do variations on “SUM2PRVE”).

Bespoke license plates are restricted to an 8-character combination of letters, spaces, or numbers, so numeronyms are often used to squish more information into the limited space, i.e “H8R” for hater .

These customized plates cost more than regular tags, about $50 across most of the US. The most coveted plates have only one or two characters. All the good short ones are long gone, and you own them as long as you renew them… however, you can transfer them to a new owner. And for more than fifty bucks. Far more, so the tag transactions usually happen through brokers or auctions.

In 2023 someone in Dubai bought “P7” for $15 million dollars. (The P is off to the side, so it reads as a single “7”). In California “MM” is up at auction for about $40 million. (It comes with its own NFT, naturally. See the Tulips to Crypto photo series for more on that subject).

The very first vanity license plate was issued in 1931 in Pennsylvania — Robert E. Kent bought “R.E.K.” — but now they are in every country except the Vatican City (population: 764; mileage of road: 1.2 ).

Many territories skip certain letters due to legibility. The most commonly excluded characters are I, O, Q and U. British Columbia also disallows Y and Z. So if you wanted to showcase your quirky inquisitiveness whilst driving around Vancouver (population: 700,000; mileage of road: 1449.659) and you wanted a “QUIZZY” plate, you are SOL. To get around these letter-restrictions though, people substitute numbers, like 1 for I as in “W1NNR”, or zero for O, as in “L00ZR”.

Graphics are being allowed more and more on custom plates. The first graphic to show up on a plate was a potato, in 1928 (in 1DAH0). Some jurisdictions have begun allowing emojis into the alphanumeric 8 character space. One place anyway: Queensland, Australia. (OZ L♥️VE)!

Vanity plates have caused some problems. A man in LA innocently registered “NO PLATE”, which led to database errors when the Department of Motor Vehicles’ computers read the customized plate literally, and issued thousands of parking tickets to the owner for not having a tag.

“GRABHER” was used for 27 years in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia (population: 72,000; mileage of road: 646) but was legally banned when someone complained in 2016 that it was socially unacceptable. One person’s offense is another person’s fact: the plateholder’s actual name was Lorne Grabher.

More vanity affairs: many people, not so innocently, try to register vulgar words. Numerals, letters, placement, spacing, and jumbles are masterfully used to get past the platekeepers, as in “BOO 85”¹. It’s a semantic arms race — some DMVs have hired semiotic experts, and even CIA contractors, to codebreak plates. (This one got past the moonlighting MI5ers in England though: “FIJK U”²).

Backwards-masking — where the license will read the right way only in a rear-view mirror — is another technique used to trick the censors. (Were he alive today, Leonardo Da Vinci, who wrote backwards and in coded shorthand, would have a very lucrative career as a license-plate consultant). For example: “3I0HZZA”³ slipped past the inspectors and was issued — no one could possibly be offended by “three-ten huzzah”, right? (GrokAI read everything in the world ever written, then concluded, incorrectly, that the plate meant: “los angeles pizza”, didactily explaining that 310 is the LA area-code and ‘za is slang for the flat and round cheesy pie of Italian origin. Grok would have had a much more accurate interpretation had it also read everything in its Large Language Model in reverse, and with a sense of humour).

So research-rabbitholing — aka PR0CRSTN8NG — but also wanting to get a legal vanity plate to hang in my studio (if not on my Lambo), I asked ChatGPT to translate some vulgar words, quite nasty ear-bleachers, really, using number substitutes, reversals, double entendres, clever synonyms, and sourcing from everything ever written, to create a bespoke license plate that would ninja bourrée past the DMV censors. 2BH0N5T, GPT was F3C3S at it, no F1N E55 at all. I was shit out of luck.

AI has a long way to go be as clever as the construction worker who managed to get away for years with "3MTA3"⁴ as the custom plate for his truck. (It might have helped that the hard-working applicant, who was also a hobby hypnotist, casually entrained the issuing clerk at the DMV counter in Roanoke — populaton: 315,000; mileage of road: 1287 — by explaining slow hand movement that he worked for 3M, the Post-it Notes company, and had invented a new tab small finger spiral for those little yellow stick pads and so subtle tone change you know, won the employee of the month as a result, which came with a $50 bonus prize strategic pause and so might as well memorialize the victory by getting a special license plate, a good idea, right? finger snap… Anyway, he got it. FIJK Y3AH!)

Here’s another vanity plate that somehow got issued: “370HSSV”⁵. It took a few years before it was finally deciphered by a driver — or at least a driver who got offended enough to wait a few hours on hold with the DMV to complain to get it recalled.

But here’s the silver lining: life in the 21st century is generally so good, so good for most people that some have to — while driving on the highway at 60 miles an hour — spot and understand as a word a sequence of 3” alphanumerical characters, which are not only encoded, but upside down and reversed… in order to feel offense.

¹ No AIs that I tried were able to crack the true meaning of BOO 85 or figure out that 8 = B and 5 = S. (More proof that humour comes from lived experience, or at least, being emobodied and attending middle-school.)
² the I and J form a broken “U”
³ read it backwards. The 3 = E, I = L, 0 = O, and the Zs have an ess sound
⁴ c’mon, even mirrored that’s an 3asy one
⁵ read it like you’re Da Vinci doing a headstand. (Or see³ )

TH3 M0ST XLNT & LAM3NTBL TRAGD 0F DADTEDDY & 1R0N LADY

sup baby?
-dadteddy
aloha e!
-irn lady

movsmade:
meu amor,
meant2be,
alafolie.

waifu,
babyhalr,
2fastman!
la doule

dour,
klownshu,
puarche!
nahh fam

si u ltr.
me 2,
siyanara.
lwyruppp!

(makeover)
sup baby?
movsmade:
ur2 sexy…

NOTES (Translations):

Romeo and Juliet, original full title: “The Most Excellent and Lamentable Tragedy of Romeo and Juliet”
SUP BABY: "Sup" is an abbreviation for "what's up", a casual greeting popular in the United States in the early 2000s. “Baby” is a term of endearment used in a romantic relationship signifying affection, which first became popular sometime in the late 19th century, possibly from the slang “baby vamp”. (“Vamp” originates from the Old French word "avantpied” — essentially the top of a shoe — which later developed into slang meaning a seductive woman who uses her charm to manipulate others).
DADTEDDY: a combination of the words "dad" and "teddy bear," suggesting a cuddly, fatherly figure. Often used to describe a man who is considered to be warm, affectionate, and somewhat chubby, (with an added emphasis on softness and comfort).
ALOHA: the Hawaiian word for love, affection, peace, compassion and mercy, commonly used as a greeting.
IRN LADY: “Iron Lady” means a strong-willed female. (Most famously used as a nickname for Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, and first given by a Soviet journalist). Of possible great attraction to men with dad bods.
MOVZMADE: “moves made”. To “make a move” means to try and start a romantic or sexual relationship with someone.
MEU AMORE: Portuguese for “my love”
M3ANT2BE: “Meant to be”: a sense of destiny, something that is supposed to happen.
A LA FOLIE: "À la folie" is a French phrase that translates to “to madness”, "to distraction" or "like crazy" in English. For example, "aimer à la folie" means "to love to distraction”
WAIFU: anime Japanglish for “wife” or someone a person regards as a romantic partner
BABYHALR: a slang term for a “baby carrier” (car, carriage, sling) , used by someone with or hauling a baby
2FASTMAN: too fast man (just in case you thought it was “two for saint man”). The opposite of N0SL0M0
LA DOULE: "La Douleur" (The Pain) – google translate detects it as Haitian Creole, a stylized or shortened form of the French word douleur, meaning pain or sorrow. This could suggest something emotional, poetic, or the experience of being kicked in the heart nuts.
KLOWNSHU: clown show, a comically shambolic state of affairs. Possibly interpreted as “clown shoe”, which would be worn during a comically shambolic state of affairs, and may be antithetical to "avantpied”, defined in SUP BABY, above.
DOUR: relentlessly gloomy, as in “dour news about the climate”.
PUARCHE: google translate detects that the language is Friulian, and means “pig”, which is a disparaging word you call someone whose behaviour you don’t like. Friulian is spoken by about 600,000 people in Northern Italy… and by at least one local swine enthusiast who drives a red Porsche… oh, wait…
NAAH FAM: “no”. google translate detects AAVE (African American Vernacular English). Urban Dictionary says: “Often used when disagreeing with someone.”
SI U LTR: see you later. First used by American teens in the 1950s, and popularized by the song 1956 song "See You Later, Alligator". (Other ‘50s teen slang for goodbye, like “toodle-loo, tofu”, didn’t catch on so much).
ME 2: me too, expressing a shared feeling
SIYANARA: “sayonara”, is goodbye or “so long” in Japanese
LWYRUPPP: lawyer up, which means hire a lawyer and get ready to be taken to court. “Lawyer down” is a phrase no one in America has said, ever.
MAKEOVER: a complete transformation or remodeling of something, especially a person's hairstyle, makeup, or clothes
SUP BABY: a shortened version of “what’s up, baby” often used by a person who is about to make a move on someone to whom they are attracted. Sometimes followed by a head nod and a compliment conveying attraction
MOVSMADE: an action following a “sup baby”, which can range from a simple head nod to an Instagram follow and DM slide in the wee hours.
UR2 SEXY: you are physically stimulating.
Finnegans Plate: the first license plate in the narrative was taken in 2022, the latest in 2025; 3 years to accumulate enough of a lexicon to create a story. James Joyce took 17 years to write Finnegans Wake. (At 12 words a year, using just license plate lingo, Finnegans Wake would take 18,253 years to write). Like Sup Baby Iron Lady, Finnegans also used a mixture of languages, puns, dialects, number mentions, and neologisms. Joyce also combined and disguised modern and ancient languages to convey a confluence of the conscious and unconscious states, ultimately creating a giant word puzzle to solve. (He would have been even better than Da Vinci as a license plate consultant). The main character (Humphrey Chimpden Earwicker) is referred to throughout the book by the initialism HCE, his wife Anna Livia Plurabelle as ALP — perfect for a 6 letter family car vanity plate). They couple lived in Chapelizod — population: 1300; mileage of road: 8.
Life is a custom L1CN5PL8 (puzzling, sometimes assbackwards, and frequently topsy-turvy)
“The Window” is a 24/7/365/1 ongoing project (slow hand movement) looking at contemporary society, through themed sets of interconnected photos nested within a larger continuum (small finger spiral) and displayed sculpturally and recombinantly on the wall. (subtle tone change) Basically, a giant image puzzle to solve. (strategic pause) More on the durational series across other posts, and HERE (finger snap)
2DLUT0FU