ALBANY – Seventy-eight-year-old Henry DeRossi isn’t a porn king, but because of his personalized license plate – XXX PERT – he often gets mistaken for one.
“You’d be surprised how many people stop me when I am at a light and want to buy porn,” said DeRossi, of East Meadow, L.I., who chose the plate as a play on his business, Expert Metal Slitters of Long Island City.
It’s gotten so bad, DeRossi said, that his auto dealer insists that he park the car in the back of the lot when he brings his Mercedes-Benz in for service.
DeRossi’s plate is one of 450,292 personalized license plates in New York, the Department of Motor Vehicles said.
Many, like DeRossi’s, celebrate jobs or professions. Countless others refer to sports teams – such as “69METS” or “H8BSOX” – or personality traits: “YBENORMAL,” “BLUZMAN,” “PMS247” or “ISTOP4SEX.”
Daniel Bahno of Staten Island was among many who chose a license plate reflecting a cherished automobile. His reads: “7D1NOVA.”
“It is sort of like the end of the muscle-car era,” Bahno said about the 1971 Chevy Nova he helped restore.
Civic pride led Andres Henriquez and his wife, Janet Goldstein, of Manhattan to register the plate “LUVNYC” for their Toyota days after the Sept. 11 attacks.
“We get a lot of thumbs up from people,” Henriquez said about passing motorists.
In addition to a $25 annual fee, personalized license plates carry an upfront cost of $43 on top of a vehicle’s normal registration fee, DMV spokesman Ken Brown said.
New personalized plate registrations dropped to 44,309 last year from 49,309 in 2007, but Brown cautioned that it’s likely more than just the bad economy causing the decline.
Other factors, including the inability of New York’s baseball teams to win a World Series in recent years, play a role.
“People get license plates to commemorate sports teams,” Brown noted.
To catch “obscene, lewd or lascivious” phrases, applications are screened by a computer program and then a DMV staff member, Brown said.
People must also explain on their application the reasoning behind their proposed plate.
The DMV’s policing efforts have sparked controversy, including a 2007 suit brought by a motorist whose application for a “GETOSAMA” license plate was initially rejected. The agency later reversed its decision.
In 2000, the DMV was criticized for trying to revoke an upstate couple’s “ADK LUVR” license plate after a woman complained that the “ADK” referred to a part of the male anatomy and not the Adirondack Mountains, as the couple said.
Of course many license plates do carry risqué phrases.
Patrick Jingool chose “XTC4UNME” but insists it was not related to illegal drugs or sex. He just wants people to have more ecstasy in their lives.
“I had too much time on my hands,” the Brooklyn man joked.
And the constant questions about porn videos have not prompted DeRossi to give up his cherished plates.
“I’m kind of a free spirit,” DeRossi said. “I like it when I’m stopped and asked, ‘Do you sell DVDs?'”