Join the
Dive New York group on this board.
There's your advice, buddies, new friends, trips, etc., etc.
Rick
Yup, Rick is absolutely right..! A great bunch of people.
I'll also put in a plug for the
Sea Gypsies for monthly meetups with great lectures, great friends, and a bunch of local dive coordination. I should mention our "
intro to northeast diving" program this year, which you may find particularly interesting and helpful...
Finally, for dive travel and friends, I can recommend
Oceanblue Divers, which also has monthly meetings (this Wednesday, actually).
Getting back to your original question, there is such a wide range of equipment out there, both new and used, that it is hard to make a single recommendation over a forum post. I would say find a local dive shop that you trust where you can try a few things on and get an idea about what works for you. I will also mention that I dive my backplate and wing both locally and in the Caribbean, so if you are serious about local diving you might want to consider something like that from the start instead of a standard jacket BCD . There are a lot of VERY active threads here about this controversial subject, but that's my 2 PSI.
I don't think that a dive computer makes you a safer diver, actually. The fact of the matter is that in 2011 most people use them, but there are plenty of people here who would say that the reverse it true, that it breeds complacency and a lack of understanding of your dive profiles. That having been said, most people pick one up somewhere along the way. Even the cheapest models these days support nitrox, so you don't need to get anything elaborate when you are just starting out...
Hope to see you at one of the meetups!
Mike