Twenty-Eight Dollars An Hour

According to NYCgarages.com, the most expensive hour of parking in New York is $28:

At Fifth Ave. and 60th St. near Central Park, a lot with 17 parking spots run by Imperial 785 Garage Corp. charges $28 for up to an hour.

Yet, only a few blocks east, on 60th St. between Second and Third Aves., the 60th Storage Corp. charges $7 for a half hour.

The Imperial lot has been dubbed the city’s most expensive parking lot by www.NYCgarages.com, a Web site launched earlier this year that helps drivers compare prices.

“It’s a total ripoff,” Joanne Torrellas, 30, said after being charged $28 for the half hour she left her car in the lot to bring her child to a doctor. “It’s so expensive,” the upper East Side mom complained.

Electrician Rafael Burgos, 33, said he drove down from the Bronx and parked in the Imperial lot because he needed to find a spot close to a customer at 59th St. and Madison Ave. “I’ve got to park somewhere, and this is the only place around here,” he said. “I didn’t see the price until I was already inside. It’s ridiculous. I’m going to have to pay half what I earn on this job on parking.”

When The News stopped by the Imperial lot, an attendant tried to stop a photographer from taking pictures of the price list, posted halfway down the one-way entrance ramp.

“I know it’s very expensive, but you pay for the location,” said the attendant, who declined to give his name.

The founder of NYCgarages.com, Benjamin Sann, said some parking companies go to great lengths to conceal their actual prices, even though they are required by law to display their rates.

“They try to intimidate me, stop me from taking down the prices,” Sann said. “I’ve had attendants close the gates so I couldn’t see the boards. I had one threaten me with a baseball bat. They try to hide the prices so you can’t see them until you drive in, when it’s very difficult to turn around and leave.”

If This Isn’t Reason Enough For A New Stadium I Don’t Know What Is

Important investigative journalism — going to a day game at Yankee Stadium and checking the temperature of the beer:

Armed with a thermometer and a fistful of twenties, the Daily News found that beer at yesterday’s afternoon game was as warm as 60 degrees — closer to room temperature than freezing.

“The guy only makes it down a couple of rows before they get warm on a 90-degree day,” complained Scott Fried, 33, of Long Island.

It wasn’t much better Tuesday night when the temperatures dipped into the 60s.

“It’s warm. $8.75 for a beer, it should at least be cold,” said Bob Henderson, 44, of Clinton, N.J., holding a bottle of Miller Lite.

Vendors blame balky coolers in the bowels of the Stadium for the perennial problem, and say they don’t like hawking lukewarm beer to customers.

For a while, they were dumping ice in their bins to keep the bottles cold — until management banned it Sunday, apparently so customers wouldn’t be splashed with melting ice water.

One longtime vendor gave The News a copy of his flyer that says “any vendor that is found with ICE in their bin is subject to disciplinary action.”

“I just don’t like selling warm beer,” he said. “Sometimes I’ll come in and they’ll tell me, don’t work behind home plate, the beer there isn’t right today.”

. . .

The News’ two-day survey found numerous examples of beer being served at 50-plus degrees — way too warm, according to Miller and Anheuser-Busch, which says beer served over 45 degrees “quickly loses its zest.”

“The recommended serving temperature for Miller Lite is around 36 degrees,” said Miller spokesman Pete Marino.

Isn’t It Always The Case That You’re Forever Waiting Around For Fresh Direct?

Another week, another feature about the illicit drug trade*:

In a city in which residents are accustomed to delivery services ranging from groceries to laundry, some, like Ricky, have discovered the convenience and safety of having drugs — namely marijuana — brought directly to their doors. “I’ve never bought pot in New York any other way,” says Ricky, who has lived in New York City for more than eight years and who has used a variety of delivery services for the past six. With such to-your-door services, the privacy of the exchanges appeals to many clients. The chances of getting caught, clients think, are also much lower.

. . .

Some of the drug delivery services are large, intricate networks of deliverymen on bicycles or on foot. Others, like Zachary’s, are smaller operations run by a single person. “I prefer smaller delivery services now, just a one-man team instead of the bicycle team both ‘Fresh Direct’ and ‘Cartoon Network’ [street names unrelated to the actual companies] use,” Molly says of the city’s larger services, the latter of which has been shut down. Fresh Direct, she says, not only uses the name of the grocery delivery service but also uses its logo on its business cards. “I like seeing the same guy over and over again instead of guessing who it is the other two will be sending.”

. . .

Like Ricky, direct delivery is the only way in which Kris, another client, has obtained marijuana while living in Manhattan. At a rooftop party with stunning views of the midtown Manhattan skyline on Saturday night, he talked about an order he placed that very day. Usually, this 31-year-old doctor says, he orders for friends when they are visiting from out of town, and Saturday was one of those days. There is always a selection of items — like northern lights or purple haze — and he says the products come in vacuum-sealed containers.

“It took them more than two hours to get here today,” he says with slight exasperation. “Sometimes they don’t show up at all.”

“That’s the thing about dealers,” says Ricky. “You really can’t rely on them to be punctual.” Ricky himself has waited an average of 45 minutes for a delivery but says it can be as little as 20 minutes or as much as two hours. “It comes with the package.”

Despite the wait, Ricky, like Molly and Kris, is a devoted fan of the services. “You paid for the comfort, you paid for the safety, and you paid for the trust, and that’s that,” he says. “It’s a good thing.”

*What is this — “write what you know”?

If You Lived Here You’d Be Laid By Now

Debate rages over whether using sex to sell condos is “fun” or if it just reveals that the market for high-end real estate has, er, shot its wad:

A woman with tousled hair straddles a grinning, shirtless man on a bed alongside the words: “Try This at Home.” This was not an advertisement for beer, perfume or instructional Kama Sutra DVD’s. It was an advertisement for the Herald Towers condominiums in Midtown Manhattan.

In a print advertisement for the Link condominiums, also in Midtown, a red-lipped topless woman (only a sliver of one breast was visible) is shown sitting in an apartment while a tattoo is applied to her exposed back.

A glossy advertisement for the Altair 20 in Chelsea has lush greenery framing a shower stall and a svelte, wet, naked woman with a strategically positioned banner that reads “To the Altair 20 Rainforest.”

Some of the advertisements for new condominiums this year look more like ads for condoms, and that has caused more than a few eyes to linger on traditionally staid real estate listings. These provocative advertisements have also raised eyebrows among real estate and advertising professionals who say sex has never been germane to real estate marketing the way it is, say, to music and underwear.

. . .

Lizzie Grubman Public Relations has increasingly been sought by real estate companies in the last year, including Corcoran, which calls itself the city’s largest residential real estate company. “Companies have come to our agency because they want to go beyond the tradition,” said Sabrina Levine, Ms. Grubman’s partner. “Now it’s all about making their building buzz-worthy.”

. . .

Mr. [Neil] Binder of Bellmarc and [NYU Stern Business School] Professor [Sam] Craig suggested that when marketers play the sex card, it is an indication of trouble, though no marketing executive would admit to such a thing.

Still, Mr. Binder said, “I can’t deny the legitimacy of the strategy.”

I Just Went All Rachael Ray On Your Ass

After the Met raised its suggested donation (emphasis on “suggested”) to $20, the Times conducts a sociological experiment of sorts to determine the precise level of scorn heaped upon cheapskates by passive-aggressive ticket booth clerks. Now we know:

The first clerk had clearly heard it all, so many times before: the cheapskate’s whisper, the tone of moral calculus and finally the question, delivered with a sheepish grin: “What do I really have to pay?”

Veteran visitors to the Metropolitan Museum of Art usually weigh the decision silently, even guiltily, as they stand before the cash register that serves as portal to one of the world’s greatest art collections. Tourists rarely think to ask, and just fork it over.

But on Thursday, the day after word went around that the Met had decided to raise its suggested admission price to $20 — the same lofty figure that has earned the Museum of Modern Art its share of municipal scorn (at the Modern, it is mandatory, not just suggested) — The New York Times dispatched a reporter with a pocket full of quarters to conduct a small, slightly mischievous sociological experiment.

He went up to five different cashiers, asked the question, humbly proffered 50 cents and waited to measure the levels of scorn that would pour down upon his head.

In truth, there was not much noticeable scorn. There was, instead, that brand of aggressive disregard particular to New York that is sometimes much more effective in evoking shame and extracting money. The first clerk who was approached, a large man with a goatee, never even looked up from his screen when asked.

“It’s just suggested,” he mumbled.

“What if I only have 50 cents?” he was asked.

“Uh-huh,” he answered, staring momentarily at the two coins plunked into his palm before ringing up $15 on the cash register, punching in a 50-cent subtraction and sliding over a green metal admission button with the detachment of a Vegas dealer parting with a dollar chip. If he had been trained in a psy-ops camp in the most effective ways of wounding a conscience, he could have done no better.

And if not Rachael Ray, then those notorious cheapskates at $9.99 . . .