When The Lowdown comes back on Wednesday, Oct. 14, how much of what you see will be a set? And how much will be a place you could walk into after the credits for a burger or a live band?
Season 2 premieres at 9 p.m. Eastern on FX and Hulu, which is 8 p.m. in Tulsa, and new episodes follow weekly. Ethan Hawke returns as citizen journalist Lee Raybon. Keith David and Killer Mike are back as well, and Tommy Lee Jones joins the cast as Raybon's father, along with Betty Gilpin, KTUL reported on Oct. 1. The filming paperwork the city released this summer points the second season somewhere new. Season 1 was built around one Pearl District corner. Season 2's documents list a music venue on Harvard Avenue, a neighborhood bar south of downtown, the VFW on Sixth Street and the river.
One Corner Carried the First Season
Season 1's home base was in the Pearl District at Sixth Street and Quaker Avenue, where TulsaPeople reported that old buildings were fixed up to play a bookstore, a café, a law office and a record store. Sweet Emily's, the diner where Lee meets Keith David's character Marty, was filled with Tulsans working as extras, according to TulsaPeople. The magazine doesn't connect the diner to any real business or address.
Even in Season 1, though, the show kept stepping off that corner into real Tulsa businesses. TulsaPeople tracked them episode by episode in its Easter egg recaps:
- Magic City Books, 221 E. Archer St., where Lee meets his ex-wife Samantha and their daughter Francis, with the store's staff picks visible behind them.
- The Antiquary, 3024 E. 15th St., which is Ray's shop in the story. The production also sourced props and decor there.
- Calaveras, 2326 E. Admiral Blvd., the Kendall-Whittier restaurant where Samantha, her new boyfriend and Francis have dinner.
- Coney I-Lander, split across two locations. The exterior is the one at 2838 E. 11th St., and the interior is the one at 3919 S. Peoria Ave.
- Circle Cinema, 10 S. Lewis Ave., which plays itself for Marty's movie date. TulsaPeople connected the scene to the theater's Noir Nights series.
- Nothing's Left Brewing Co., 1502 E. Sixth St., where Francis gives a poetry reading.
- Philbrook Museum of Art, 2727 S. Rockford Road, the setting for Lee's meeting with Betty Jo and for a wedding. Philbrook also hosted the Tulsa premiere screening on Sept. 22, 2025.
- Old City Hall, 124 E. Fourth St., where a character named Donald holds a press conference outside the building.
- Harwelden Mansion, which stands in for the private "Summit Club" where Lee meets people from a company called Akron.
That list covers downtown, Kendall-Whittier, East 15th Street, Brookside and Maple Ridge. Still, the Pearl corner was the show's home on screen.
The Season 2 Permit Spreads the Map
FX announced the renewal on Jan. 7, 2026, and said production would start in Tulsa that spring. Tulsa Flyer reported that the shoot was expected to begin in March and run through the summer.
The best look at where the cameras went is a city filing. A June 4 letter of support from the Tulsa Office of Film, Music, Arts & Culture is attached to the city's permit for "Block 4 pt1". It lists locations the production had secured for filming between June 9 and June 25, 2026. The permit application's own summary gives the dates as June 9 through June 23. This filing covers one block of a shoot that ran for months. It shows where filming was planned, and it can't confirm which scenes made the final cut. Several private homes on the list are left out here.
These are the public places on that list, plus one location the trailer has already shown:
| Location | Where it appears | What it is today |
|---|---|---|
| The Colony, 2809 S. Harvard Ave. | June 2026 permit filing | Live-music venue open daily from 4 p.m. to 2 a.m. |
| Tina's | June 2026 permit filing, listed at 1810 S. Cincinnati Ave. | A 21+ neighborhood bar serving smashburgers and cocktails. Its website lists 1732 S. Boston Ave. |
| VFW Post 577, 1109 E. Sixth St. | June 2026 permit filing | Veterans post with a public lounge and kitchen |
| Riverparks near Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza | June 2026 permit filing | Public park land along the Arkansas River |
| Cain's Ballroom | Season 2 trailer | Active concert venue with shows booked through November |
The Colony keeps its own calendar. Tulsa Flyer's July profile of Amber Watson describes weekly shows there. The same filing also lists OSU Medical Center at 744 W. Ninth St., Moore Funeral Home at 1908 S. Memorial Dr., and a closed City of Tulsa facility at 2023 Charles Page Blvd. Those are working buildings, and none of them is a place to visit because of a TV show.
The river location stands out this year. Cyrus Avery Centennial Plaza honors the man often called the father of Route 66, and Tulsa spent the summer marking the road's 100th birthday. By that point, the Season 2 shoot was already set to film along the same stretch of Riverparks.
The Address on Both Lists
Of all the places TulsaPeople documented in Season 1, one address also appears on the June 2026 permit. VFW Post 577 at 1109 E. Sixth St. served as the AA meeting spot for a Season 1 character named Allen. It is listed again for the Season 2 block that filmed in June.
The post sits on Sixth Street, the same street as the show's Pearl District home base and the same street as Nothing's Left Brewing. It has also stayed open to the public since the cameras left. The post's website describes a public lounge and kitchen with live music on Wednesdays and Fridays. The Season 2 premiere falls on a Wednesday.
What Moved Since the First Cameras Left
Some Season 1 locations look different now. Frank, a Season 1 character, eats at Wildflower Cafe's old spot at 1306 E. 11th St. Wildflower has since moved downtown to 913 S. Boulder Ave., into a bigger space in the former First Christian Church with a larger dining room, an outdoor patio and a coffee lounge, News On 6 reported on Sept. 10. The Downtown Tulsa Partnership said a grand reopening and the unveiling of a full-service coffee bar were planned for Oct. 8. The old 11th Street space is now The Helen, a breakfast restaurant that opened May 6, according to Tulsa Flyer.
Oak Tree Books at 2812 E. 15th St. is a quieter tie to the show. It is the rare-book store where Lee Roy Chapman worked. Chapman was the Tulsa historian who inspired Hawke's character, and the store inspired the show's fictional Hoot Owl Books. The store reopened under new operators Sean Stanford and Daniel Woodul, and its website lists public hours at the same address. TulsaPeople also noted that rare materials by Oklahoma crime novelist Jim Thompson can be found there. Those are the books a character in the show says he hid letters inside.
The Pearl District changed on paper, too. On Aug. 4, the City of Tulsa added Pearl Main Street and the SoBo District to the Oklahoma Main Street network. They joined Kendall-Whittier, Route 66, Historic Greenwood and the Tulsa Global District. The program offers training, technical help and resources. The city's announcement mentioned the show directly, saying people nationwide "will notice the streets of the Pearl District represented in the FX hit series, The Lowdown."
"The Pearl has always been a neighborhood built by people willing to take a chance. Every storefront represents someone who believed in this community." Matt Sanders, executive director of Pearl Main Street
A Route for Premiere Week
Each of these stops has an address and public hours, and they run from Archer Street out to Harvard Avenue:
- Magic City Books on Archer for a look at the staff picks seen in Season 1.
- Wildflower Cafe at 913 S. Boulder for coffee in the former church building, where the reopening celebration was planned for Oct. 8.
- Sixth Street from Quaker to the VFW for the show's home-base corner, a stop at Nothing's Left Brewing and the Wednesday music listed at Post 577.
- The Antiquary and Oak Tree Books on East 15th for Ray's shop and the real store behind Hoot Owl Books.
- The Colony on Harvard for a late show at a venue that appears on the Season 2 permit.
Season 1's finale was screened at Philbrook with support from Experience Tulsa. Watch local outlets for any similar event as Season 2 runs its weekly episodes from Oct. 14.
Mark Bradshaw spent 27 years telling Tulsa's stories on KTUL, and our team still loves seeing the city on screen. If Season 2 has you looking at the Pearl, Sixth Street or Harvard Avenue as a place to live, The Bradshaw Group can show you those blocks in person, or you can request a free home valuation to see what your own Tulsa address is worth this fall.
