Take Next Car

In a city where steel tracks once sang the rhythm of progress, the clattering streetcar—an iron serpent of civic pride—now finds itself ambushed by a scrappy armada of jitneys, those nimble, gasoline-breathing upstarts that dart through avenues like rebellious minnows around a wounded whale. The franchise’s heir, a poised yet restless heiress with sparks in her gaze, descends from mahogany boardrooms into the sooty dawn, colliding with a wiry motorman whose calloused palms know every rivet of the failing rails. Together they navigate a sabotaged switch-point of deceit: copper wires surreptitiously slit, spikes pried loose beneath moonlight, and whispers of bribery echoing inside the tiled waiting station. While the jitney syndicate—part carnival, part racket—hoots at every derailment, the duo forge an uneasy alliance equal parts flirtation and class defiance, their mission a last-ditch effort to rescue a wheezing empire of clanging bells and cast-iron tickets from the scrap heap of modernity.