“Don’t wanna be buried in debt or in sin / So we pray to Jesus and we play the lotto” (Brandy Clark-Pray to Jesus Lyrics)
The Lotto man is the result of a New York City wide hunt for the most favorite man in America. Lottery tickets are sold at 216,000 licensed locations in the U.S. Most of them are convenience stores, gas stations, and supermarkets. I discovered the elusive, New York Lotto Man first on one of my afternoon street photography trips through all five boroughs, while I was an art student in Manhattan and living Greenpoint Brooklyn. Greenpoint used to be a Polish workers neighborhood in New York and was heavily gentrifying at the time I lived there. It is now one of the hippest, rather expensive neighborhoods in Brooklyn. It also contains two superfund sides, which is surprisingly nothing unusual for Brooklyn’s fanciest neighborhoods.