Took me some research (and MR help) to find it too, I haven't had to find it in years. Finder windows used to have that little clear button in the upper right that would show the status bar, so you didn't need to find it elsewhere, but that's gone in Lion.
I really hate the way Finder preferences are spread out and/or hidden. For example, the View Options menu makes no sense to me, why not just put it as a tab with the other Finder preferences. I've been using OS X for a decade and to this day I can never remember which window a particular preference is in.
