If you’re a regular reader of the site, or a license plate fanatic who has already found this series, you know that yesterday, we started unveiling power rankings of the standard issue license plates of every United State and District.
If you want to check out the others, here are your links:
New England
The Southeast
The South
The Great Lakes
The Great Plains
The Mountain West
The West Coast
If you want to check out today’s, here we go.
We’re doing the Mid-East States today, as the title of this post outright says. And we’re sneaking D.C. into there even though it isn’t a state (and frankly, we don’t really care if it becomes one, but if it does we would like to trade Florida for some territories that might be better states down the line). Here we go:
7. Maryland
Maryland’s license plate is a disappointment. That flag gives them so much to work with, and would it kill them to have a crab on it? Instead, we get the most boring homage to the flag possible. And while I get how making the whole thing look like that flag would make it hard to read the license plate number, that also isn’t my problem.
6. New Jersey
New Jersey’s license plate would be fine if not for that odd double helix dangling down the center. Does New Jersey have a tie to Watson and Crick? Is it some reference to people from Jersey having a specific DNA? Or does it not, in fact, have anything to do with the nucleic acid and only appears that way?
Perhaps they added it to distract from the fact that putting New Jersey’s hourglass figure on a license plate promotes an unhealthy standard of beauty to which other states too often try to measure up.
5. Columbia, District of
The Washington, D.C. license plate’s hollering about taxation without representation got even better two years ago, when they added the word “end” to the phrase, finally making it clear that they are against the practice after a couple decades of just pointing out it was kind of happening. The time for action, evidently, is 2017.
Anyway, it’s a fine license plate. The D.C. flag is pretty cool, so it’s a bummer we don’t get more of that, but it’s on there in its own way, and they have protesting to do.
4. New York
Just a solid license plate. Distinctive. Powerful. Shows the outline of the state, reminding people that Long Island is a weird geographic happening and the state exists beyond Yonkers.
3. Pennsylvania
It is an interesting phenomenon that when I first looked at the outline of Pennsylvania’s shape in the top left corner, I thought the license plate’s battery had gone empty.
Anyway, another good, solid plate, and the employment of the keystone is a good move. Pennsylvania: holding us all together.
2. Delaware
Delaware is easy to forget, but its license plate is one of the best. It’s defiantly simple. It’s distinctive and distinguished. It reminds us all that because there weren’t very many people in Delaware to begin with, it was easy to win the ratifying-the-Constitution race.
Well executed, Delaware.
1. West Virginia
Classic. Beautiful. Comfortable.
West Virginia’s gorgeous license plate is a tactful homage to a beautiful state. The blue and yellow prove striking compliments, yet are easy on the eyes.
Wild and wonderful indeed.
Maryland License Plate Image taken from Wikipedia, where
it’s labeled Public Domain.
New Jersey License Plate Image taken from Wikipedia, where it’s credited to
Thankful to be me 515.
Washington, D.C. License Plate Image taken from Wikipedia, where it’s labeled
Public Domain.
New York License Plate Image taken from Wikipedia, where it’s credited to Rouge
Furby.
Pennsylvania License Plate Image taken from Wikipedia, where it’s labeled Public
Domain.
Delaware License Plate Image taken from Wikipedia, where it’s labeled Public
Domain.
West Virginia License Plate Image taken from Wikipedia, where it’s credited to
Lieutenant Ramathorn.
