words: Nat Thomson
photos: Sarina Finkelstein
Cleaning your palms from hand-to-hands is a hustle that’s almost too legit to quit. “Phil and I met through selling weed,” says Jon Price-Totaro, 21, the Cheech to Reason co-creator Phil Basis’ Chong, while sifting through the dozens of boxes containing the duo’s latest collection of tees, sweatshirts and hats, of the streetwear variety. “It’s just snowballed from there,” he continues, “we used to bag up ounces, now we box up t shirts.” Hard at work in their apartment-cum-stockroom, the question remains; was it tough to go legit? Bassis, 20, jumps in, wrapping up a call to his dealer, “we talk about that all the time. Really, we miss having the cash on hand.”
Graduating from high school and starting Reason only a scant two years ago, the two see themselves at a forefront of what’s pegged as a lifestyle branding movement. “At first we just had a few ideas for stupid shirts to do,” says Jon, “but we’ve come to see that Reason is our lifestyle; young and reckless. We’re living the life right now, while a lot of other brands are past their prime.”
With downtown partying a lifestyle gimmie, the boys of Reason are more enthusiastic rattling off other Manhattan minutia that defines the brand; from spotting undercover cops (“If you see a couple white guys waiting for the train, one in a Mets jacket and one in a Yankee’s jacket, you definitely know they’re undercover” says Phil), to early morning pranks (“We used to do what we called ‘Wake Up Soho’; We’d run down Greene, Mercer, Spring, hitting all the buzzers, screaming at the top of our lungs!”). With a laptop full of denim, cut n sew and even sneaker specs for 2007, these cats stand a good chance of waking New York the fuck up.
