[Rick Parker]

San Francisco is an absolutly gorgeous city with breath taking views but it has one severe problem of auto parking. Steep hills
narrow streets and tall office building that house enormous amounts of the cities workforce. Living close enough to visit on a regular occasion I can attest to the difficulty and expense (I'm sure others can too) in finding or maintaining a regular parking
spot. (This gets better) About 20 years ago is when California first began issueing personalized license plates for use on cars and pickups. Many other states had beendoing this for years as a money maker for their states. It's a good idea and allows us the fredom of expression that we hold so dear. Check This out! The San Francisco Chronicle Newspaper carried a story of a guy who had been arrested after ammassing over a hundred parking tickets, and failing to pay a one of them. He had gotten a personalized plate (tag) that said " NO PLATE "; each time an officer ticketed the car parked illegally, the tag number entered on the ticket was " NO PLATE ". This went on for months until an officer while writing a citation recognized the vehicle as having been on that he wrote up earlier in the same day. He began to get curious and saw that their were numerous citations strewn about the floorboard of the car. He had a "BOOT" put on the tire so it couldn't be driven an began a speedy investigation as to who owned the car. When he radio'd into dispatch (as the story went) he was asked what the tag was. He replied " NO PLATE ". He was told by dispatch that a tag or VIN would be needed to determine who owned the parked car. Well you get the idea. As the story went this guy worked in a building nearby and would often park in expired meters, it seems as though each time the citations went through the system whenever the tag number was asked for in the data bank, the clerk would enter in good faith " NO PLATE "and this guy never got caught for over a year. Yet when they did catch up with him it was "Very Expensive ". Only in America!