LI grandpa peeved after joke license plate revoked by DMV — now he’s asking governor to step in
A Long Island grandfather says he’s more than a little “peeved” after New York’s DMV revoked his bathroom-humor vanity license plate — and he’s now appealing to the governor to get it back.
Seth Bykofsky, 69, had displayed the plate “PB4WEGO” on his car for more than five years before receiving a January notice from the Department of Motor Vehicles stating it was “no longer in compliance” with the agency’s screening standards. Bykofsky insists the phrase — shorthand for “pee before we go” — is harmless and has drawn laughs across the country.
“I’ve driven through, conservatively, 15 states — red states, blue states — and everyone smiles,” the West Hempstead resident said. He recalled one encounter in which a police officer pulled up beside him at a traffic light just to say how funny he found the plate.
Bykofsky said the message reflects a familiar refrain from family road trips with his children and, later, his four grandchildren. “You get on the road and 10 minutes in — nowhere near a rest stop — and you hear, ‘Dad, I have to go,’ or ‘Pops, I need to go,’” he said. “So it became: pee before we go.”
After the revocation, he reluctantly replaced the vanity plate with a standard issue combination of letters and numbers. Still, he maintains that no one he’s encountered has found the original wording offensive. “It’s clever, it’s comical, it’s witty — and it’s something every parent and grandparent says,” he said.
Bykofsky added that he had tried to obtain the plate for years before it finally became available, delighting his family when it did. “My grandkids would laugh so hard I’d have to tell them, ‘Don’t laugh so hard or you’ll have to pee!’”
Now he’s asking Gov. Kathy Hochul to intervene. While acknowledging the dispute may seem trivial, he argues it raises broader concerns. “In the grand scheme of things it’s meaningless,” he said. “But on a personal level, I think we have rights that shouldn’t be abridged. As silly as it is, it feels like administrative overreach — even a form of stifling free speech. What comes next?”
He pointed to a similar case in New Hampshire, where then-Gov. Chris Sununu allowed a resident to keep the same “PB4WEGO” plate in 2019. Bykofsky said he has connected with the woman involved and sees them as “kindred spirits.”
New Hampshire’s motto is “Live Free or Die,” he noted. “In my case, it’s ‘Live free — or pee before we go.’”
If his appeal fails, Bykofsky already has a fallback plan: he intends to frame the revoked plates and hang them in his bathroom rather than destroy them as instructed. “I’ve seen much more insulting things on cars,” he said.
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