Pennsylvania is getting a new license plate, and it sucks.
The old one wasn’t great, either, especially given its notorious peeling problems. Yet at least it hewed to Pa.’s traditional blue-and-gold color scheme, a classic combo that appears statewide everywhere from Pitt’s athletic teams to Philadelphia’s flag (whatever you think of it).
But no: instead of the classic colors, we get a red, white, and blue design that looks like a cross between the Presidential Physical Fitness Award certificate and a Phillies City Connect hat. This boring design is replicated on highway welcome signs that will replace the current blue-and-gold “Pursue your happiness” slogan with new “Let Freedom Ring” branding. All of this is, per Pa. Gov. Josh Shapiro, in service of “celebrat[ing] Pennsylvania as the birthplace of American democracy and highlight the state’s leading role in the celebrations of the United States in 2026.”
Setting aside any snark about what semiquincentennial celebrations will even look like given our country’s present political predicaments, three things make me hate everything about this.
The first and most important is that bell. If Shapiro’s administration wants to “celebrate the best of what the Commonwealth has to offer,” why are we doing so with one of our most clichéd, underwhelming national symbols? Anyone who’s seen the Liberty Bell in person can attest to the fact that it’s just a regular old bell and, apparently, not a very effectively cast one, at that, regardless of its historical significance. While the Liberty Bell might hearken back to the birth of democracy, the Pennsylvania Memorial at Gettysburg, as just one example, is a much more powerful statewide symbol of the hard work of preserving said democracy.
More critically, the Liberty Bell is decidedly a Philadelphia symbol. Beyond its use across Philly’s sports teams past and present, it’s farther from Pittsburgh than the state of Delaware and parts of New Jersey. You’re looking at a five-and-a-half-hour drive and $100 in tolls if traveling to the Liberty Bell from the Ohio border along the increasingly expensive Pa. Turnpike without an EZ Pass.
I’m not sure many folks west of Harrisburg feel a scintilla of identification with this poorly made bell that goes beyond some “yeah, I guess that’s in Pennsylvania” shrug. It would be like representing all of California with the Golden Gate Bridge, Missouri with the Independence Arch, or New York with only the Empire State Building — or all of Pa. with the Cathedral of Learning. A keystone, groundhog, ruffed grouse (the Pa. state bird), or even deeper cuts like a Pa. long rifle or GG1 4859 electric locomotive are all much stronger cross-Commonwealth symbols.
Then there are the colors. Oh, you picked red, white, and blue? Congrats! You and everyone else. California, D.C., Idaho, Indiana, Kansas, Massachusetts, Missouri, North Carolina, Virginia, and Washington all use a primarily red, white, and blue scheme on their current plates. Like Pa.’s anodyne seal-on-a-bedsheet flag, our new plates will do little beyond that aforementioned bell to set themselves apart from the pack, especially when viewed at a distance. Beyond the staid-yet-mismatched typefaces and silly bell, the colors are, quite simply, played out.
The welcome signs are especially bad in this regard. Why not pick something, anything from our beautiful natural scenery, or choose a design that stands for the whole Commonwealth when greeting people at our borders?
Lastly, the slogan. “Let Freedom Ring”? Like that bell that sits forever silenced inside a Philly tourist trap?
Which freedoms are we supposed to be ringing here? Freedom to choose between Sheetz and Wawa or between “yinz” and “youse”? Freedom (for now) to get an abortion? Freedom to get incarcerated for distributing a drug that’s now legal in most surrounding jurisdictions and then, as fate would have it, make license plates and “a wide variety of high-quality products” for $.40 an hour as punishment?
So no; I won’t be running out to replace my crappy “Visa card” plate with the new design. Big anniversary celebration or no, Pa. deserves better than this 76ers uniform of a license plate. If the goal here is to show off Pa. as the “Great American Getaway,” we should be encouraging people to get deeper into the Commonwealth than Market St. in Center City to really appreciate what the Keystone State is about.
I’m also not convinced that looking like everyone else and reducing Pa. to one of our most hackneyed symbols is what’s going to get people to visit here, let alone stay. Other aesthetic and political fixes would make a much bigger difference. Pennsylvanians deserve plates and signage that represent all of us — save the Liberty Bell iconography for your team’s next merch dump.
This article appears in Jul 3-9, 2024.
