Friedo hit all the points, and Harriet had a great bit of advice on the ‘look’, with good additions by Maeglin.
However, what I would add is, don’t damage your trip by obsessively trying to avoid looking like a tourist. I stare up at the skyscrapers all the time. I love them. So, don’t worry too intensely about looking like a tourist. After all, that’s what you are.
The last is also a good point. Though I live and work in Manhattan, I can count the number of times I have been in midtown in the past year with two hands. When I do end up there, I still look up at the skyscrapers because they are badass.
I just don’t do it in a crosswalk while the light is changing.
Thanks for the advice. Just curious, does each Borough have a slightly different culture from each other? is Central park the only park in New York?
If by “slightly” you mean “radically different”, then yes. Not only that, neighborhoods within each borough have different cultures.
Central Park is the largest park in the city, however there are many other parks.
Riverside Park runs along the West Side.
Bryant Park is a large lawn with some outdoor bars and restuarants by the NY Public Library below 42nd street.
Madison Square Park in the 20s is home to the Shake Shack. Great burgers if you don’t mind waiting in line for 45 minutes.
Union Square on 14th & Broad has a pretty decent park surrounded by restaurants and shops.
Washington Square Park is also nice (it’s the one with the big arch you’ve probably seen in movies or TV shows).
East River Park is great if you like playing football or soccer on astroturf between sweeping views of Alphabet City project housing and a bunch of factories and other industrial buildings in Brooklyn just over the river. Not every park makes a great tourism brochure photo.
The biggest, but far from the only. In fact, I haven’t done the math but a long skinny park like Riverside Park is certainly longer–it goes from 72nd St up past Grant’s Tomb, and there are scads of smaller parks–Washington Square is pretty, though it was under construction last I looked, or Morningside Park, bordering the extreme Upper West Side and Harlem, just to name two I’ve spent a little time running through–and lots of tiny parks, like Gramercy (which you probably won’t be able to get into, as it’s for local residents) or Bryant park (in back of the main library on 5th and 42nd St.)
Yes (to the point where people who live in certain boroughs are ‘tourists’ in others) and no.
My only advice to you would be to figure out beforehand what you want to get out of your trip and plan/research accordingly. If you really want to go to some Broadway shows and see where Sex and the City was shot, just give in and live it up as a tourist. You may not return with tales of chilling with the Gyllenhaals at Cafe Habana, but you’ll have a good time.
If you anticipate visiting the city again, get a vacation rental or stay in a smaller hotel in SoHo or nearby. Spend time in the neighborhood, check out the shops and look up art shows and concerts in Time Out magazine. You may not get to Ellis Island, but if you want a more, uh, ‘real’ experience, that is probably your best plan of action.
Also, what everyone else said. If you need to gain your bearings, step off the street and into a doorway, s’il vous plait.
I spent a week in NYC by myself a few years ago, and it was a blast. I never once felt threatened or unsafe in anyway, and I never gave two thoughts to the possibility of getting lost, as it was all laid out very neatly.
One of the neat things about being by yourself is that other tourists get the impression that they’re not interrupting you by asking you to take their photo. I took so many photos of so many different people from so many different places around the world, many who couldn’t even speak English, that all puffed up for the photo like they were so proud to be in the USA. That little nuisance actually turned out to be one of my favorite aspects of the trip.
Is it the whiteness or the tennis shoe-ness which looks touristy?
Okay, I gotta give that one to you. That was funny. 
I think I understand you (up to a point), but it strikes me as odd that someone walking down the street who simply says, “Hey”–just that, not asking for money or anything else–could constitute an intrusion.
And yeah, many of us are in our own little worlds, especially during our daily commutes (between the pressures of school and work, I do that, too), but I guess my thing is this: Is whatever you’re (second person “you”) multi-tasking really so deep that you can’t, when meeting someone else’s gaze (as opposed to just not paying attention to other people), just at least nod a friendly “hey”?
And why am I now hearing Jim Croce, may he rest in peace, singing “New York’s Not My Home”? 
See that’s such a tourist thing to do. A true New Yorker would have sprinted down the street with their camera.
Oh white sneakers are fine…if you happen to be from Queens…in 1988.
Haha! Well, I can’t imagine wearing a white shoe in the city anyway. And, I’m not very concerned about looking ‘touristy’ for our upcoming trip because, well, I’ll be a tourist. I was just curious. And I’m bringing some old sneakers.
That’s such a good point about dawdling on the sidewalk and stopping suddenly - I will have to make sure I get that ingrained in our minds before we go. People here do that all the time. Heck, people here stop their cars in the road to talk.
I’m a Brit and often travel by myself, in America and elsewhere. I’ve been to New York many times in recent years, most recently in April. Please don’t let any scare stories stop you from either visiting or enjoying this delightful and impressive city. The scare stories are mostly either out of date or exaggerated, and bear in mind that the vast majority of serious, violent crime happens in cases where the victim knows the perp, or in cases where the bad guys (drug dealers etc.) fall out among themselves.
There has been plenty of good advice in this thread. As many have said, looking like a tourist isn’t such a bad thing, but either looking like an idiot or behaving like one is definitely a bad idea, in Manhattan or anywhere else.
If you’re male, keep you wallet in your front trouser packet. Safe as houses. If you’re female, believe me, it IS actually possible to function without what we Brits call a handbag and American women refer to as their purse. Basically, that bag full of junk you take everywhere with you. These things are gold dust to street theives and crooks for obvious reasons - it only takes one split second to grab one, and they can get cash, credit cards and ID all at once. Leave it behind!
YMMV. When I’m on my way somewhere in Manhattan, I’m usually trying to figure out how I’m going to get there on time without the aid of a transporter (to continue the Star Trek metaphor). Simultaneously, I’m psyching myself up for the appointment (usually a business meeting) and trying to dodge all the tourists who meander in my path of travel and inexplicably stop in the middle of the sidewalk. I’m thinking about whether my wallet’s still there after brushing up against that guy half a block ago. I’m wondering whether or not the grate I’m about to step on will give way when I step on it, or give me an electric shock. I’m looking a block ahead and trying to figure out how I’m not going to get held up by the tour group coming in the opposite direction. I’m also thinking about whether I should have taken the subway or hailed a cab.
Again, YMMV, but I find NYC during rush hour or busy times (which is most times) to be an assault on the senses and on one’s personal space. Dealing with how to thwart that requires a large percentage of the available processor cycles in the ol’ noggin’.
And then someone I might or might not know says “Hey.” I can’t waste time or mental bandwidth wondering about whether I know them or not. If I recognize them, I’ll return the greeting and issue a hurried excuse about why I can’t stop. No recognition? I’ve already ignored you and descended the steps to the 4/5.
Honestly? Both. There is a wealth of excellent footwear that is neither obviously for athletics nor Rockports for geriatrics.
Interesting. I will check out these New Yorkers’ footwear while I’m there gawking at tall buildings.
I grew up in NYC, and left for college at the College of William & Mary, which for the uninformed among us in in the Southern part of Virginia.
There was definitely a huge culture shock – in the first year I would often feel… well, kind of scared by total strangers speaking to me on the street in the friendly “hey” way. People who speak to you on the street in NYC generally want something from you. I felt like somehow EVERYONE viewed me as a target.
I don’t know how to put it except that New Yorkers have so very little personal space – sometimes sacrificing all of it just to get by as in a daily commute on a jampacked subway, living with roommates, etc – that I think headspace becomes a precious commodity. Entering the headspace, the only private protected real estate most people enjoy on the island of Manhattan, without a reasonably good reason is an intrusion. If you have a reasonably good reason I truly believe New Yorkers are some of the helpfullest people on Earth.
And if you said “hey” to every person you saw coming the opposite way, there’d be no space left for your own thoughts, it would just be a huge long stream of “heyheyheyheyheyhey.” Because you’re never NOT seeing a flood of people in the other direction, faster than you could even address them.
Edited to add - there are lovely parks outside of Manhattan even! all over NYC. One of the most famous is Prospect Park in Brooklyn. The nearby Brooklyn Botanic Gardens are also very well known and beautiful.
looks down at my white reeboks
You can have my white tennis shoes when you pry them off my cold, dead feet! I think the people at reebok actually made the low top, princess cut sneakers just for me…I am always so comfortable and I can walk damn near the length of Manhattan without a problem. All those women walking around the city in stilettos make me laugh. Why the hell wouldn’t you want to be comfortable?
Seriously though, prepare for the walking. If you don’t do too much of it you might want to start before you leave. I’ve lost 60 lbs since I moved to NYC a little over a year ago because I got rid of my car and started walking everywhere.
I will answer the OP’s question by telling a true story from my first trip to New York. This was back in the mid-80’s in my college days. My roommate Ken and I drove up there from Kansas for Spring Break. He was going to spend the week in CT with a girl he met on trip to Europe the summer before, and after I dropped him off I headed out to Long Island to hang out with some friends from college who were going to grad school at Stony Brook.
So, my first day in the big city, I rode the train in from Stony Brook with my friend Deb. I was trying desperately not to look like a tourist, refraining from gawking up at tall buildings and stuff like that. We spent the entire day walking around the city, and late in the day we were heading back to Penn Station to catch the train back to Long Island. We’re standing on a corner in Times Square waiting for the light to change when Deb elbows me and says “Look at that guy over there across the street. He looks like he just blew in from Kansas!” The guy was dressed in beat up jeans and a t-shirt with a quilted flannel shirt over the top, and was in urgent need of a haircut. He really did look like a hayseed.
It was my friend Ken, the one that I had dropped off in Connecticut the day before.
Once upon a time, I’d drive to NYC every weekend to visit Nen and Maeglin. I planned to move there, and actually got a job at NYU (that I ended up not taking, woe is me all these years later). I was a nervous wreck about getting to the interview myself.
Maeglin wrote me this list of Rules of New York City, which I here transcribe for you.
Streets run East/West. Avenues run North/South.
Numbers go in ascending order north and west.
Subways, for the most part, run north/south.
There are lots of crosstown buses. Any bus that stays in Manhattan is prefixed byt he letter M and usually the street that it runs follows. The M57 is a crosstown bus that goes back and forth on 57th St.
There is a street sign on every corner. Know them. Use them. Love them.
Watch the way street numbers ascend and descend. It changes from the east side and the west side.
As long as you know where the water is, you cannot get lost. By the time you see the water, you should know whether you’re looking out over the West Side Highway or FDR Drive.
Do not go above 100th St. on the East Side.
If someone tells you he lives in the NYC metro area, it means he lives in New Jersey. Deride him.
Central Park is very large. Do not get lost in Central Park.
Aw. I still get the warm fuzzies when I read that list, Maeglin.
Numbers go in ascending order to the East (the East River) from I think Park Avenue. Or is it Madison?
Except the ones heading for Queens, like the 7 line and the E & F trains.
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The second Crocodile Dundee movie shows what using small town manners in New York looks like.