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.