Cap’n Ken’s Homespun Wisdom

License plates have evolved into cheap advertising platforms for states. Drivers end up paying to have tiny mobile tourism billboards attached to their cars (think the auto-wrap advertising idea in reverse). We have “Georgia … on my mind”, Louisiana has “Sportsman”s Paradise” and Alabama has replaced “Heart of Dixie” with the curious “Stars Fell on Alabama” (it”s a reference to an Ella Fitzgerald song, but stupid nonetheless).

I had a friend in high school who moved from Wyoming, and his tag had this cool cowboy-on-a-bucking-bronco logo. I thought that was pretty brilliant. Says pretty much everything Wyoming wants you to know without some contrived “Wyoming - we got horses” slogan.

But as I was making my way home Tuesday, I got behind a car with Pennsylvania tags. I remember seeing “Keystone State” on their tags in the past, but this one was different. No “Keystone State”, “Hey, look at the funny Amish people” or “Parts of the state are clean!” slogans. The tagline - so to speak - was:

www.state.pa.us

Apparently Pennsylvania is putting all their marketing eggs in one basket - hoping I”ll be so intrigued that I”ll just have to punch up www.state.pa.us when I get home. (OK, so I did … but only for research).

What do you find at www.state.pa.us? Apart from some bizarre web design (the navigation has a fade-out effect that made me think my monitor was dying), you get the standard links to “top news” such as “Governor Rendell Appoints Robert B. Miller Jr. as the Governor”s Sportsmen”s Advisor”, government agencies, and specialty websites (my favorite is the Falcon Cam - a whole site build around some falcons that roost on a state building in Philly).

Not surprisingly, this move was made in late 1999, just at the height of Internet hysteria. Seems then-Gov. Tom Ridge was sucked into dotcom fever (the new governor is pushing his “plan for a new Pennsylvania”, so I guess he”s managing the turnaround after the VC money dried up and Ridge had to put the state”s IPO plans on hold).

The really odd thing is that the state choose www.state.pa.us as the URL for their tag. First off, that”s the standard government-assigned homepage all states get, so it”s fairly easy to figure out how to get their on your own. Secondly, why would I want to visit www.state.pa.us? I might go to www.pennrocks.com or www.seetheamish.gov, but the state government”s homepage? Weak.

It turns out West Virginia has also added a URL to their tag recently, but their URL is the more marketing-focused www.callwva.com (which begs the question - if your URL has “call” in it, why not just print a 1-800 number instead?) and it was added in the plate”s header, leaving the pretty cool “Wild, Wonderful” slogan intact.

Pennsylvania actually brands www.state.pa.us as “PAPowerPort” (yes, they have it trademarked), and they own www.papowerport.com, although it”s a dead-end URL. So maybe www.PAPowerPort.com on the tags? That”s lame, too.

BUT, the state operates www.ExperiencePA.com as their tourism site. Hey, there”s an idea.

My exhaustive research led me to a site showing license plates through the years for all 50 states. You can see how plates turned from simple vehicle identifiers to marketing tools in the mid-1980s. I think it would be pretty cool for a state to come out with a “throwback” license plate from 1969 or something.

I think my favorites have to be New Hampshire, which has managed to keep it”s rockin” “Live Free or Die” slogan alive in this age of political correctness:

… Idaho, whose slogan is “Famous Potatoes” but recently added a script “Scenic” in front of the “Idaho” up top, to let everybody know that the famous potatoes are pretty cool to look at:

… and Washington DC, which changed its slogan from “Celebrate & Discover” to “TAXATION WITHOUT REPRESENTATION” in 2000 to protest the lack of support for its statehood:

I think that”s a pretty interesting precedent. License plates as political speech on behalf of the entire state. Maybe Mississippi could change its plates to “Vegas Sucks!” to help promote its casino industry. Or Georgia could have “We”re not last in education … Alabama is!” on its tags.

You have to deal with a lot of crap living in the hood. Shiftless dudes hanging out on Moreland Avenue at all times of the day; piles of clothes, furniture and whatnot appearing on the curb outside the houses of the evicted (although the plus there is that you can get rid of just about anything by simply toting it to the curb since people are trained to look for curb-side freebies); beat-down American cars spewing smoke as they barrel toward you on narrow neighborhood roads; and endless lines of people buying Cash 3 tickets at the Chevron when all you want is a Coke.

And, until about two years ago, you had to drive 10 miles to find a decent grocery store. Then the Publix opened at East Lake, followed by the big, shiny, all-new Ghetto Kroger on Moreland down by Charles” house. The new Ghetto Kroger replaced the original a couple miles farther down Moreland.

Ghetto Kroger was my nickname for the old store (think Disco Kroger in Buckhead or the former Freddy Kroger on Ponce), and anyone who ever ventured inside would know why. I made that mistake once, then learned the short way to Publix at Ansley the Publix on Ponce when it opened before the East Lake Publix opened.

When I saw the new Kroger under construction, I was intrigued. In my former life, I lived in Alpharetta (home of some of the most glorious Krogers around), wrote some about the new store designs and became quite a fan of the big deli counters, meat departments, produce counters and all that.

I went to the new Ghetto Kroger the first day it was open. Yep, looked like the Crabapple store. The daily case mooed, the lettuce racks made the cute thunder sound when the mist was unleashed. The clientele was diverse, to say the least, but it all seemed to work.

Now, about a year or so later, the all-new Ghetto Kroger has made my “don”t go there” list. It”s not the customer base, which somehow does seem to be made up of more “old school” neighborhood folks than the Publix, it”s the service.

At about 9 p.m. Sunday night, they had a total of three registers open, and the lines of shopping carts were winding all over the front of the store. There had to be more than 30 people total waiting to check out. Even the U-Scan lanes were backed up, because everybody who came close to being able to get all their stuff through self checkout was taking that route.

I tried to be patient, but gave up after about 10 minutes of no line movement, other shoppers combining their carts in front of me to skip the line and the growing stench of humanity packed in there on a rather warm evening.

So I became a real-world instance of what e-commerce folks call “shopping cart abandonment”. I was tempted to leave it sitting driverless in line, but that would just hurt those poor saps stuck behind me. So a quick left from the line of lines, an easy roll down the sugar and flour aisle and I was off to Publix.

Ten minutes to re-create my shopping cart, quick checkout (no lines), and I was out.

Goodbye, Ghetto Kroger.

Like most things in my life, the creation of this blog was spurred by a sense of competition, one-upmanship or whatever you want to call it. I learn my boy Charles has one and a couple of hours later — poof, mine appears.

Charles names his after his neighborhood; I name mine after my “hood. The challenge has been answered, my friend!