Plates all your own

So, why call them vanity plates? After all, the Vermont state government makes serious money from those personalized license plates, and you’d think it could find an adjective that didn’t connote excessive pride in one’s appearance, qualities, abilities and achievements.

Other places don’t call them vanity plates. The United Kingdom calls them prestige plates, private number plates, cherished plates or personalised registration. They’re personalised plates or custom plates in Australia and New Zealand, and request plates in the Czech Republic.

But we call them vanity plates, and there are lots of them around here — just over 6 percent of Vermont cars have vanity plates, and Stowe ranks ninth in Vermont for the sheer number of vanity plates, with 383 registered to the ZIP code 05672.

The top three are Colchester with 600, South Burlington with 593 and Barre at 584.

Of the 6,482 license plates issued for Stowe, according to the Department of Motor Vehicles, 5.9 percent are vanity tags.

In truth, most of them don’t actually seem vain. Some are reminders of birthdays or anniversaries. Others convey personal messages or have special meaning to the owner, such as GRNDADS. Some are simply indecipherable.

What’s the motivation?

Vanity plates cost an extra $48 per year, and there are rules. Those plates can have no more than seven characters; references to drugs, sex, or racial or ethnic epithets are verboten. Vanity plates cannot start with the letter Z, and although single-letter plates are allowed, that letter cannot be I, J or O.

Why have almost 400 Stowe residents figured out a special license-plate message in seven letters? Why pay extra money to give cars nametags, rather than number plates?

Is Stowe an especially vain town, or is there some intangible that drives people to figure out the seven special white characters they want to see on a green plate?

“I think people in Stowe tend to be a little individualistic, and it’s a fun way to kind of get a message across, make a little statement,” said Bobby Roberts, a Stowe Realtor with a long history in vanity plates.

A cozy feeling

Seeing recognizable plates around town makes the place feel smaller and cozier, says Roberts, who’s lived in Stowe for decades. He’s been jokingly referred to as the Mayor of Stowe, and he can often be spotted heading up and down Mountain Road in a black truck with the license plate STOWE.

“I always thought (vanity plates) were kind of fun. They’re an extension of your personality,” Roberts said.

He’s had custom plates for as long as he can remember, including a yellow Porsche with MELLO on its tags, and several cars with a cheery YO greeting fellow drivers.

He’s also had YDAYADA, a nod to his propensity to chat with any and all he meets.

His STOWE plate is a big success story, though. Roberts, then the owner of the legendary Rusty Nail nightclub, nabbed it during a trip to the Department of Motor Vehicles.

“When I was at the Nail, I wanted some sort of ski-related plate. So I got ASPEN and I got so much crap for having ASPEN as a plate” instead of Stowe, Roberts said, laughing.

Unfortunately, the vehicle plate for STOWE was already taken at the time.

Then he got lucky. The day he drove to the Department of Motor Vehicles office in Montpelier happened to be the day that unique registrations for pickup trucks went into effect, and no one had snatched the STOWE truck registration.

“She goes, ‘Truck plates came out today. Stowe’s not taken.’ That was it. I grabbed it,” Roberts said.

Much like simple, clean website addresses, the STOWE plate is a valuable asset.

“I’ve been offered all kinds of dough for it. Marvin Gameroff offered me 5 grand for it,” Roberts said, referring to the late Green Mountain Inn owner who convinced Roberts to keep his nightclub in town after it burned down.

Even Stowe Mountain Resort staff members have kidded around about bargaining for Roberts’ plate, he said — maybe a season pass in exchange for those five prominent letters.

A family tradition

Lisa Hagerty owns Well Heeled, a clothing and shoe store on Mountain Road, and chairs the Stowe Select Board. Her car’s plate reads WELLHLD, but that just scratches the surface of Hagerty’s life story as told in vanity plates.

Her father held a Massachusetts custom plate that read QB1, which stood for the Quiet Birdmen, an elite group of pilots — he was one — who had logged high hours of flying time.

“His license plate QB1 still exists in my family. My brother Griff has it in Massachusetts,” Hagerty said.

Her mother’s Massachusetts low-number plate, 22603, is also still in the family. It originally belonged to Hagerty’s grandfather.

In Vermont, low-number plates go from 101 to 9999, and can be passed on to immediate family members. If nobody grabs it, the number is reassigned to a state vehicle, such as a police car.

Stowe ranks much lower when it comes to low-number plates — it’s in 37th place, with just 61 low-number plates held by people in the ZIP code 05672.

Roberts thinks that’s due to Stowe’s nature as a tourist town, without as much family history as other places.

“Stowe is a transient town. Other places, the kids pass them on to the family. They’re old Vermonters back up in the hills and stuff,” Roberts said. “You know those have been around a while.”

“I love seeing my brother with 22603,” Hagerty said, although associations with the original plate-holder can come back to haunt current drivers.

“When it was on my mom’s car, I was a prolific collector of parking tickets when I was at Harvard,” Hagerty said.

One of her sisters inherited 22603 from Hagerty’s mother, and while at a show in Boston, she returned to find her car with a boot on the tire, thanks to Hagerty’s checkered parking past.

“These plates, they not only carry memories, but some of my naughtiness collecting parking tickets over the past,” Hagerty said with a laugh.

A piece of who you are

Plates are a way to communicate a piece of who you are to others, Roberts and Hagerty agree.

“When I’m in parking lots out of town or out of state, it’s always a conversation piece, like, ‘What is that?’ ‘It’s my store in Stowe, Vermont,’” Hagerty said.

“A lot of the places that have businesses, it’s a way of advertising without spending a lot of dough. My trucks were always plastered with Rusty Nail,” Roberts said, and his NAIL plate was a way to extend that theme. “I think when you have a business, it’s nice to have a little recognition,” he said.

“It tells a little bit about who you are. We spend a lot of time in our cars. It’s just another piece of the uniform,” Hagerty said.

Alan and Lorrie Handwerger are prominent Stowe restaurateurs; their son Neil owns Café on Main and Stowe Sandwich Company.

Alan Handwerger’s plate reads GR8SOUP.

“People love the plate. Some ask why it happens to be on our car. I tell them it’s just what the DMV gave us. Go figure,” Handwerger said.

“Seriously, a lot of people comment on it, which give us the opportunity to pitch our businesses. Whether or not that translates into increased sales, I don’t know. Couldn’t hurt them,” he said.

Vanity archives

The wall at Tres Amigos, where the Rusty Nail used to be (and remains, in part, as the Rusty Nail Stage), is something of an archive for Stowe’s vanity plate history. Owners Mark Frier and Chad Fry also own the Reservoir in Waterbury and the Bench in Stowe, and the Reservoir and Tres Amigos both have walls plastered in custom plates.

“Most of them are from customers over the years. Once you start a trend of putting them up at the bar, regular customers tend to donate them, thinking they’ll be here forever,” Frier said.

Some people label their plates so they can get them back if the restaurants go out of business or change ownership.

“I think it’s a conversation piece,” Frier said. “People like the challenge of figuring out sometimes what the actual vanity plate means.

Frier himself has had many vanity plates, including WAXNRDE for a ski trip he took.

He thinks a smart vanity plate often inspires other people to think one up.

“I loathe narcissism, but I approve of vanity,” wrote Diana Vreeland, famed fashion columnist and editor who died in 1989. Certainly she would have approved of vanity plates, too.

“Vanity is becoming a nuisance,” author Margaret Atwood wrote in “Cat’s Eye” in 1988. “I can see why women give it up, eventually. But I’m not ready for that yet.”

Hold on to that plate.