During the late Eighties and early Nineties, department stores in the New York Tristate area faced a theft problem they couldn’t avoid. If a store sold Ralph Lauren, it was susceptible to a visit from the Lo-Lifes, a gang from the Crown Heights and Brownsville neighborhoods in Brooklyn. The crew made it their daily mission to ransack shops for the most ostentatious or easy-to-grab Polo merchandise, which they then resold or wore like ceremonial garb.
“It was a full-time job,” said Bonz Malone, an original Lo-Life member and graffiti artist who went on to become a music and culture journalist. “We blew out Macy’s, Lord & Taylor, Saks Fifth Avenue. We were coming in 20 and 40 people deep. There was no way you could stop all of that.”
The Lo-Lifes helped make the Waspy brand desirable within urban communities. Their brotherhood and fixation with Polo spawned a subculture that was initially confined to Manhattan and Brooklyn but spread across the globe thanks to the group’s founder, Thirstin Howl 3rd, a rapper who calls himself a Polorican, and eventually the Internet, which made more people aware of the movement. Last year, Tom Gould, a photographer from New Zealand, released a book with Howl
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