As was nicely documented when it first premiered in the fall of 2017, HBO's "The Deuce" used a number of blocks in Washington Heights as stand-ins for New York in the 1970s.
The series' design team did an almost uncanny job recreating a gritty Times Square where the sex industry had its roots.
Now that filming for Season 2 is well under way, the crew has returned to the same stretch of Upper Manhattan, notably Amsterdam Avenue between 164th and 165th Streets.
Last Thursday a Mexican restaurant was morphed into the iconic New York arcade Playland and a nearby driving school into an X-rated movie theater.
The show's production team found the right mix of qualities it needed to recreate a vintage Times Square, according to the New York Post: six-lane streets lined with older stores, plus a lack of trees and scaffolding.
Two months earlier, it transformed a block five streets south into another scene from the 1970s, with vintage cars and shop signs dotting the street.
Season 2 of "The Deuce," starring Franco and Maggie Gyllenhaal, is set to premiere on September 2.
