Sooooo despite my resolution not to do any bucket list stuff, I seem to have acquired tickets to Hamilton on Broadway on July 7th, and will be there from the 5th-9th.
I’ve never been to New York before, I would love some tips for stuff to do while we’re there (other than the big obvious tourist stuff, Statue of Liberty etc).
FWIW our hotel is on 57th right by Carnegie Hall - we won’t have a car, but I understand one doesn’t need one up there.
Where to begin?! What are your interests? Are you up for a good long walk, like across the Brooklyn Bridge in the heat?
Not so much into walking, no, but we’re good with the subway/busses.
I could have a pleasant day at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the American Museum of Natural History or one of the other museums in New York. I’ve had fun just walking around in the midtown or downtown areas, seeing what I can see and looking at the buildings and the architecture. But maybe that’s just me.
Since you brought up the Statue of Liberty for a trip six months away I’d recommend seeing if there is availability for climbing the stairs to the crown. I did it a number of years ago. They were only letting 200 people up a day, so you needed to reserve around six months in advance. It was relatively inexpensive and I felt it was well worth it and really interesting to see the construction up close and personal.
For something a little different, maybe an escape game? Not sure if they have them where you’re from, so if you aren’t familiar with this, it’s a real-life game where you and your group try to figure out how to, well, escape a room you’re locked in. NYC has several of them now, here are a couple in midtown:
http://static.escapetheroomnyc.com/bookeo.html
This seems to be a complete list:
http://escaperoomdirectory.com/#US (scroll down to New York)
ETA: There are more of these around the US than I thought! Maybe it’s not so unusual after all.
Anything air conditioned.
I don’t recommend an escape room since the “prize” is that you get to go outside in New York in July.
Have you considered arriving a few days early to catch the Macy’s fireworks show?
To be fair, you get that if you fail, too.
And the smell…
I’d suggest waiting until Autumn. 
Well, I really enjoyed walking along the High Line. Yes, even in July. But the museums are good and they are air conditioned. The Met is much too large to do in a day, but I like the Guggenheim. Take the elevator to the top and gradually wend your way to the bottom. The subways and busses are air conditioned but the subway stations will be beastly hot. Either the Yankees or Mets will be in town if that interests you. The Museum of Natural History is very nice and not far from where you are staying. The Met is on the east side and a bit awkward to get to from you.
I really liked Central Park. The geography is neat (big rocks!) and there are lots of cute little bridges. There are statues and other landmarks to visit in the park, and it’s just plain nice to walk around. I was there in the fall/winter, but there are lots of trees so it may be OK even in the heat.
We visited one of the cat cafes, Koneko, at my 9-year-old daughter’s request (she loves cats). It was fun, although a bit pricey for what you get, which is a visit with various cats in the cattery. It is in a residential neighborhood in the Lower East Side, and it was nice to see a different part of Manhattan other than the business-y areas. There is another cat cafe in Manhattan called the Meow Parlor.
Please share a little more about your interests. There are hundreds of excellent museums, 24,000 restaurants, and 722 miles of subway track in NYC, just for a few examples of NYC’s massive size and density compared to almost all other American cities. However, it’s a misconception that NYC is full of “hidden” attractions. In fact there isn’t anything in NYC that’s any good at all that isn’t thoroughly reviewed on Yelp, on Tripadvisor, in guidebooks, and by bloggers. If you want suggestions that are more specific to you, you’ll have to give us more information about you.
tl;dr what do the words “cool” and “unusual” mean to you?
That’s a good question. Another one; noting that the OP gives her location as “Beijing, CA” (wherever the hell that is), there may be things in NYC that are cool or unusual for most people but not for people from there.
We went to the Prospect Park Zoo last month. It’s very charming.
Nothing like sweat gushing down your spine… I moved away years ago – can you still walk between moving cars? To save yourself when you realize no AC is the reason that car was unusually empty?
Hmmmm let’s see…
Not real into clubbing, but drinking/socializing isn’t out of the question…my travelmate enjoys physical activities (hiking, etc) though I’m not so into that myself and I’ve got some mobility issues that make long walks an issue. The Natural History Museum sounds interesting to me. Both of us enjoy good food, though I’m more adventurous that way than she is. I’d like to try some of the cuisines that we don’t see so much of on the West Coast - we have a ton of Mexican, Indian, and East Asian restaurants, but I have no idea what Puerto Rican food is like, we don’t have many European ethnic restaurants that aren’t chains or really expensive, and Jewish Delis are rare as is Caribbean food of all types.
I like beautiful old architecture, which we don’t have much of here, and historical things. The New York Public Library is definitely on our to-do list, we’re both big readers. Any notable independent bookstores would be bitchen.
Oh, and we definitely have Escape Rooms in LA! The “Bejing, CA” thing is because I live in a deeply Chinese part of Los Angeles.
Does that help?
If you end up at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, don’t miss the Arms and Armor rooms.
The museum backs up on the Park of course, which can be pretty to view from inside in the AC 
