Something was missing when Missoula announced the winners of its annual Name Our Snowplows Contest last week — ICE.
Instead of clever and defiant ICE-inspired names you’d expect from a town with Missoula’s activist bona fides, the winning submissions, picked by the city, were “Bob,” “Betty Whiteout” and “Ctrl + Salt + Delete.”
Sure, those are fine. But also: really?
We checked the winning names a couple days ago only after Chicago’s snowplow naming contest made headlines because voters there picked “Abolish ICE.” Sounds like something Missoula would do, we thought. So we were mildly disappointed to learn what Public Works would be painting on our plows, however idle they may be this winter.
But then we noticed the contest precludes submissions deemed political or inappropriate. No doubt the city had received several entries reflecting Missoulians’ ICE anger and angst — and all sorts of other names unfit for public snow-removal equipment. They were just keeping things, as the rules say, “fun and welcoming.” And, unlike in Chicago, there was no public vote.
So we asked the good folks at Public Works for the full list of submissions, and they obliged.
The name submitted the most? “Abolish ICE.”
We never doubted you, Missoula.
Ten people entered it (compared to the three who proposed “Betty Whiteout”) out of 139 total submissions. Throw in “ICE Melter 1000” and “ICEbreaker,” too.
As for all of the other disqualified submissions, well, we’re not constrained by decorum like the city is. So let’s put it to a vote.
We’ll call “Abolish ICE” the people’s plow. What other names do the people choose?
We’ve picked 20 from the list. Some are clever, some lewd, some require a Missoula decoder ring. Collectively, the range of submissions captures Missoula’s biting wit and weirdness — and prove that while our plows might be apolitical, residents are anything but. Happy voting. 🗳️
Results
