Lately my tastes have been running towards hard cheeses--right now I've got some English Cheddar, Holzhofer (stinky!), Pave du Nord Mons, and a couple other unlabeled pieces in my cheese drawer.

Cheese shops I like in NYC:
Murray's Cheese in the West Village
Bedford Cheese in Williamsburg (worth going in just to read the descriptions on their cheeses, very very funny)
Saxelby Cheesemongers in the Essex Market on the Lower East Side--specializes in American stuff, mostly from the East Coast. Anne is super nice, too.

There's another cheese stand in the Essex Market that sells only one kind of cheese--Comte. Interesting business model...