Summer in the city: Yesterday was the Siren Festival at Coney Island, and though there were a few bands I would have like to have seen, it was too damn hot to join the indie-themed masses gathered on the blacktop drinking warm beer and complaining about how damn hot it was. So a couple of friends and I decided to show our local stripes and hop the free Ikea ferry (awesome) to Red Hook (awesome), where we unhesitatingly bypassed the superstore and headed to the ballfields. To play ball, you ask? Hell no. For a Latin feast, natch.

Yesterday was opening day of the Red Hook Ballfield Food Vendors summer season, and it was phenomenal. Heaven is the innumerable vendors hawking ethnic variations of the pork-beans-cornmeal trifecta. There were Ecuadoreans selling pickled cabbage enchiladas, Salvadoreans papusas and plantains, Mexicans tacos and huaraches, and Colombians seeking revenge by sending their gringo customers away with plates loaded with enough steak and sausage to ensure an early death. There was corn on a stick and smoothies and horchata and fried sweet bean and plaintain donuts. There was Ballantine's in a brown paper bag sipped through a straw. And though there were times when, due to the deliberate pace of our Latin friends getting in line seemed akin to stepping into a Beckett novel, by and large everybody who had trekked to the Brooklyn hinterlands understood that their patience would be handsomely rewarded.

Word to the wise: you don't go to Red Hook just to pick up a taco or two and be on your way. This is a full day's worth of waiting and eating, and strategy is required if you're going to maximize your time. I would suggest beginning at the southernmost vendor, which yesterday was occupied by the Colombians, and ordering something to munch on while you get in line for the next vendor. Repeating this tactic 5 or 6 times will take 3 or 4 hours, but will result in a comprehensive tour of Central and South American street cuisine. If you need to there is plenty of shade in which to lay down and take a nap; alternatively, you could pop into the Ikea and pay penitence for your gluttony by walking the either delightfully confusing or maddeningly deceptive aisles which are themselves reminiscent of Managua.

Oh, and if you're keeping track: This is why I'm awesome.

What with the weather being nice - if hot - and the fact that I occasionally have somebody to walk with, I've taken to enjoying an evening constitutional as I make my way home from work. I take various routes, enjoying the sights and smells and sounds, and generally trying to lose myself in the sordid architecture of downtown. But even when I walk alone, I am not alone. Indeed, from the moment I leave work on 13th St, there are few moments when I am not being watched.

The NYPD operates 2,310 surveillance cameras on the streets of Manhattan alone. This is in addition to the approximately 2,000 cameras keeping watch in the subway system, and over 3,000 that supervise the goings-on in the city's housing projects. The project to install surveillance cameras throughout the city began in earnest in 2006, ostensibly as a response to the September 11 terrorist attacks. Ironically, September 7th, 2001 was An International Day of Action Against Video Surveillance.

There are 12 community districts in Manhattan. Walking home, I pass through districts 1, 2, and 3. Combined these districts boast 652 surveillance cameras of either the stationary, rotational, or globe variety. Additionally, there are innumerable cameras monitoring the exteriors of private businesses and residences. Just the other day, I counted 4 cameras directed on the sidewalk outside the Hell's Angels headquarters on E. 3rd. St. Invariably, there's a camera scanning the portico beyond the entrance to every apartment building. The doormen always know who you are before you walk in.

Leaving work, I'm picked up by the rotational camera on the north side of 13th St between University and Broadway. The cameras between Liberty and Maiden on William, between William and Nassau on Maiden, and right outside my building record my arriving home. In the elevator I am watched. As I do my laundry I am watched. Sometimes I dog-sit for some former clients, and help myself to a cocktail from the bar. I am never sure that I am not being watched.

As a child I struggled with bouts of insomnia. Unable to sleep, I would feel myself utterly alone in the world. To comfort myself I would conjure the image of the 24-hour Safeway just down the street. 24-hours: I knew there was always a cashier working the late shift, and as long as there was I wasn't alone. The refrain from a song I can't remember suggested that the city is the easiest place to be lonely. Surrounded by people, anonymity is default. I don't know, maybe it's narcissism, but the idea that maybe I'm being watched, that I have a witness...well, maybe it makes things a bit less trivial. That my actions are endowed with some degree of gravity by virtue of their being recorded...I don't know, guess I find the idea of voyeurism comforting.