Fifth.
And the N, R, W, V and G trains. And those going primarily to Brooklyn, like the J, M and Z trains. And the L train.
Here’s how to not look like a tourist in New York City:
Wear three pairs of torn-up sweatpants, a dirty ragged tunic, and a beat up pair of old basketball sneakers, then smear yourself in dogshit and drink three bottles of Wile Irish Rose. Then sit in a doorway of a closed shop, and take in the city.
Wow, Rasa, I kind of can’t believe you still have that. That was another lifetime. Feel like chucking it all for a weekend and coming in? You know we’ll take care of you. The House of Pain is something of a mellower place now.
As for the trains that go east and west, that wasn’t exactly relevant for a weekend in Manhattan.
As for the white sneakers, well, there are certain acceptable contexts. It is acceptable to wear tennis shoes to and from the subway during the week. If you are a woman and wear a suit and tennis shoes, everyone knows you are just going to work and will put on your real shoes in the office. There is occasionally something quite attractive about a well-dressed professional female speeding from the train to the office in a slick dick suit and sneaks.
Hell, I do the same thing, save my sneakers are light, impeccable black Pumas. I keep my work shoes in my desk drawer. Though they did not cost quite as much as John McCain’s, they are quite elegant and I would hate to go to the effort of replacing them.
Many, many things exist between heels and reeboks for walking. Again, pbthh’s violation of this basic principle might be part of her style and might make her look snappy and not, as msmith pointedly stated, like she is from Queens in the late 80s. I have never seen her (that I know of), so I will not offer my typically pointed opinion.
Curiously enough, in my years of watching tourists come and go from the World Financial Center, I have found that the most egregious offenders are either from Pennsylvania or Michigan. I am sure all of the Pennsylvanians and Michiganders at the SDMB are the exceptions to this rule, in addition to having large penises, IQs several standard deviations from the mean, and drive Priuses.
I am tempted to put my own opinion to the test. September 11 always brings out the worst offenses, and people of all stripes converge on Ground Zero for some kind of delusional catharsis. I am tempted to take a day off work and wander around the financial district with my camera like a tourist. A tourist of tourists. A metatourist, even. I would post my findings with lugubrious commentary.
The truth is, I kind of love tourists and I really want them to have a great time in my beloved city. This time of year, a day doesn’t go by when someone doesn’t ask me in the morning on my way to work where Ground Zero is. I like to walk them to the site, show them where the information booth is, etc and etc. As much shit as I talk, I love to play tour guide. Go figure.
I’ll be in Manhattan this weekend. If you see a little southern woman wearing white sneakers, carrying a camera and looking up at the skyscrapers, y’all wave.
I don’t tell people I live in Hoboken with my girlfriend. I generally just tell people I’m going to the Port Authority Bus Terminal because I’m homeless and that’s where I sleep. Once everyone is out of sight, then I’ll board the 126. It seems more respectable.
The largest park in NYC is Pelham Bay Park, out in the Bronx. Parts of it are quite lovely, although I wouldn’t expect tourists to go there. Central Park is only the fifth largest park in NYC, although it’s the largest in Manhattan.
People! There’s city outside Manhattan!
Cite?
#1 stop worrying about the crime rate rumors. This isn’t the 80s and NYC is one of the safest cities in the world. The sureest way to show that you are from out of town is to say “Harlem/Bronx/Brooklyn/Central Park? Isn’t that dangerous?”
#2 don’t get one of those I <3 NY tshirts
#3 don’t stand around on street corners. When the signal turns into the white guy (or even if its still the orange hand but the coast is clear) you MOVE before I stampede over you. If you have to gawk at buildings, do so away from the corners and at the building side of the sidewalk.
#4 don’t take out a map. Any subway station (and they’re everywhere in the tourist region) has them as soon as you get down the steps. Use those.
#5 if you do get the courage to enter the subway, it’s walk on the left, stand on the right on ALL escalators. If you and your luggage are blocking the path on the left side, you will hear ‘fuckin tourist’ under the breath of the person behind you.
Hey! My office is on Houston St (technically the building address is Varick St, but its on the corner)…does this mean that I do whoring for a living?
And for the record, when people ask, I say I work in the West Village…which has all of these crazy triangular blocks and even I get lost here on a regular basis.
Back on subject - one more thing. If you want to see the Statue, save yourself $25 and take the Staten Island Ferry roundtrip. And for the love of god, don’t get one of those foam green crowns…
Though folks should always keep their wits about them wherever they are, what you’ve said here bears repeating.
Y’know, it’s funny–though I’ve heard this a million times (not just for NYC, but in general), and I don’t doubt its veracity, I’ve never been tempted to keep my wallet in my front pants pocket. Part of it is that my wallet is fairly thick (about 4.5" when folded, which reminds me that I seriously need to clean it out) and wouldn’t fit comfortably in my front pocket. (Hell, it’s tricky enough for me to remove it from my own *back * pocket.) I’d guess the other thing is, though I realize perfectly well that just about anything can happen anywhere, I don’t, for the most part (and for various reasons), imagine that I’m very *likely * to be a victim.
Oh, yeah, I totally do this myself. For both tourists and non-tourists, from a full block away if possible. Y’know, it occurs to me that walking in this city (or, really, wherever other people are walking, too) is quite a bit like driving: scan ahead and to the side, be prepared to move, scan ahead and to the side, be prepared to move, etc. In fact, when I see the way that some of these people walk, I pray to all of the gods that I don’t believe in that they don’t drive. 
True that, sir, true that.
I’ll never get NYC’s neighborhood snobbery. I guess there can be a whiff of it here in Chicago, but I don’t really notice it like I do in New York. I’ve spent a couple weeks in Hoboken over the last two years (I was just there two months ago), and it’s a perfectly lovely place, perhaps a little bit “fratty” for my tastes, but if I lived in NYC, Hoboken would be one of my first choices.
That’s funny, a few weeks ago when I emerged from the G train, I got caught behind three skinny girls who still somehow managed to fill up the entire sidewalk, walking s-l-o-o-o-o-o-o-w-l-y. As I puffed and tsked and finally managed to bob and weave through them so I could get the hell home, I overheard one say “People here walk like other people drive.”
Yes! Exactly! Frickin’ stay in the slow lane and let me pass! 
Sorry to reopen an old thread, but I have to point out that Hoboken is neither in NYC nor NY State. It’s across the river in New Jersey, and is NOT a neighborhood of NYC.
There is also a lot of snobbery over which subway line you live on. The G (or Crosstown), being the longest line that does not enter Manhattan at all, is the bottom of the barrel. Rachael, you are brave to admit it here … I myself am a G rider, but am also an easy walk to the L and 7, which get me SOME props!
Yes, I think I noticed what state I was in.