Location, Location, Location

The Times takes readers on a tour of the worst-located apartments ever:

Even if there were not pigeons roosting in a front-yard coop and Roma tomatoes ripening at the gate, it would be fair to say that, in an otherwise industrial section of Jamaica, Queens, Kathy Lebron’s home sticks out. The green shingled two-family home at 148-07 95th Avenue is the only house on the block.

Oh, and the giant cement tanks from the adjacent masonry yard that sit next door: those are not just the neighbor’s, they are the landlord’s.

“He’s a really nice landlord,” Ms. Lebron said about Gerardo Mastronardi, who owns Queens Ready Mix, at 148-01 95th Avenue, as well as 148-07. Still, she said, renting next to a cement yard is challenging, even for a house that otherwise looks like it belongs in the country.

“I don’t keep the windows open at all,” Ms. Lebron, 37, said. “There’s just a layer of dust over everything. It’s noisy from all the trucks. You have to clean constantly.”

The dust and noise might be a hassle (talking outside is impossible without pauses during truck traffic) but the Lebrons are paying private school tuition for Amanda and Alyssa. They have decided to put up with it for the time being. The landlord said the rent is $1,000.

“Something in Florida would be nice,” Ms. Lebron said wistfully.

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.”

Whosoever Believeth In Him Should Not Perish, But Be Forever 21

In my book, Jesus will always be Forever 21:

Forever 21, a popular chain of cheap-chic clothes with stores throughout New York, is literally spreading the Gospel with every sale. When customers leave the shopping emporium with bags full of red cocktail dresses and panties emblazoned with phrases like “Y is for Yummy,” few realize that they are also walking away with a bit of religion.

The owners of the company are devout Christians who print in small type on the bottom of the company’s iconic yellow shopping bags the words: “John 3:16.”

One of the most frequently referenced passages of the Bible, John 3:16 says, “For God so loved the world, that he gave his only begotten Son, that whosoever believeth in him should not perish, but have everlasting life.”

New Yorkers differed about the message’s significance:

Shoppers interviewed this week said that they had no idea about the John 3:16 on the bottom of their shopping bags.

“Jesus wore clothes,” a 22-year-old from Brooklyn, Jason Schultz, said when informed about the phrase on his bag. He said it didn’t bother him that the company wanted to spread a religious message.

Not so for the rock guitarist Dani Neff, who was out shopping for a black sparkly halter-top to go with a pair of red high-heeled shoes.

“That’s so freaky,” she said. “It kind of annoys me that I’m carrying this around without even knowing it.”

But the discreet placement — and the religious content — of the phrase could be a smart advertising move, according to Pamela Klein at Parsons The New School for Design.

“Religion is hot — it’s in the air. Madonna has a crucifixion in her current show and it’s cool to be interested in God these days,” Ms. Klein said.

Has there already been a Sunday Styles article about how religion is hot? Freelancers, sharpen your pencils!

Gentrification, Your Face Is . . . A Hare Krishna B&B

Everybody — everybody — has some sort of hustle going on in this town:

A faction of Hare Krishna — the kooky cult whose members are supposed to promote goodwill and forgiveness — is in the middle of a civil war following a string of lawsuits and a fistfight in its East Village temple in recent months, court papers show.

The New York chapter of the Interfaith League of Devotees — whose bizarre and shady practices were first exposed by The Post in March of last year — is being sued by its nationwide leader for putting the sect’s nonprofit status in jeopardy by renting rooms at the temple building to tourists.

The temple’s bed and breakfast takes in more than $300,000 a year.

Joe Bonomo, a k a His Holiness Krsna Balarama Swami, filed the suit against the group’s treasurer, Susan Bauer, a k a Eternal Love, in Manhattan Supreme Court last month.

Submitted as evidence is a Post investigative article that details a reporter’s weeklong stay at the devotee digs and that uncovers the cult’s method of getting cash from unsuspecting guests and pushing them toward Krishna.

The bed-and-breakfast, which remains in operation, makes an estimated $360,000 a year tax-free, according to Bonomo’s attorney, Krishnan Chittur.

“The bed-and-breakfast is generating huge amounts of cash money — $30,000 to $50,000 a month,” he said.

Funny, I Thought For Sure It Was A Mermaid

Don’t tell me there’s a manatee in the Hudson now:

Added to the chronicles of great beasts that have descended upon New York City in the year 2006 is one that is arguably the greatest of them all. A beast, upwards of 1,000 pounds and a cousin to the elephant, which dwarfs the coyote, the deer and the dolphin that preceded it. A beast that, at hundreds of miles north of its natural habitat, has most likely made the longest and most arduous journey among them. A beast, with a pudgy-nosed face and a sweet-potato-shaped body, that could even be considered cute: a manatee.

Over the past week, boaters and bloggers have been energetically tracking a manatee in its lumbering expedition along the Atlantic Coast and up the Hudson River.

John H. Vargo, the publisher of Boating on the Hudson magazine, put out an alert last week, much to the incredulity of some boaters.

“Some were laughing about it, because it couldn’t possibly be true,” Mr. Vargo said.

The manatee has been spotted at 23rd Street near Chelsea Piers, West 125th Street, and later in Westchester County. It appeared to be healthy.

Randy Shull, a boater from Ossining, spotted the manatee about 4:30 p.m. yesterday while his 21-foot boat was floating at Kingsland Point Park in Sleepy Hollow.

“It was gigantic,” Mr. Shull said. “When we saw it surface, its back was just mammoth.”

It is unusual, but not unprecedented for manatees to travel this far north — the seaweed-munching sea creatures are commonly associated with the warm waters of Florida.

Manatees have been reported along the shores of Long Island and even as far north as Rhode Island. It is unusual, however, for a manatee to be spotted inland in a river this far north.