A feisty town filled with nutty adventures: phone calls from Barbra Streisand; subway rides spent jawing with picturesque (but ultimately unthreatening) panhandlers; knockdown, drag-out clearance sales at Loehmann’s. The natives sometimes talk tough, but they don’t really mean it, because underneath their crusty exteriors lie hearts as big as Lefrak City.

In fact, so all-powerful are the forces of love, family and benign mischievousness — and so unimportant are factors like income and upbringing — that a Jewish working girl from Flushing with tight skirts, huge hair and a 100-octane accent can easily get a job as a surrogate parent for a family of up-tight Manhattan-dwelling bluebloods.