Waco is turning toward Día de los Muertos — the Day of the Dead, the first two days of November — and there are two walls in this town where the party never ends.
Both are painted by the same man. Both are full of skeletons. And neither one is the least bit spooky.
Dinner with the departed
Around the walls of Taqueria El Mexicano Grill & Bar #9, at 1420 N. Valley Mills Drive, the Day of the Dead is going wonderfully.
A dark-haired woman — painted in the style of a certain Mexican painter you're already thinking of — shares a laid table with a calavera mariachi in his black charro suit, guitar up, grin permanent. Between them, painted platters of tacos and botanas and frosty micheladas crowd the tablecloth. Nearby a catrina wears a headdress of marigolds, roses and feathers piled higher than any hat has a right to go.
The best door in West Waco is around the side. CANTINA, announced in painted letters, with painted brick crumbling away around a full-length skeleton señor mid-serenade — painted on the door itself, so he swings open with it. And because this is Waco, a cheerful cartoon bear throws its arms up beside the painted social-media icons: BEAR'S are welcome! The afterlife, it turns out, accommodates Baylor fans.
Tony Bryant painted it in 2024, from his own idea, for owner Orlando Laon — and signed it the way he signs everything in this town: his name, and his phone number right beside it.
The loudest patio in town
Bryant's other Day of the Dead wall is on North 17th Street, at El Charro Tapatio, and it is his loudest. The whole patio is painted black, end to end — the right call, because on black every color reads at full strength after dark, when the patio is actually full.
EL CHARRO TAPATIO is hand-lettered across the top. Below it, three skeleton mariachis in charro suits and sombreros work a guitar and a guitarrón; a skeleton woman turns in a folklórico dress with the skirt caught mid-swing; sugar skulls wear flowers; and big pale-blue and orange roses with marigolds fill every gap.
It's Day of the Dead imagery used the way it's meant to be used. Not haunted — festive. The dead aren't lurking. They're at the party, and they brought the band.
Who is Tony Bryant?
If you've walked our trail, you've already met him. Bryant came to Waco from Georgia by way of Atlanta, where he illustrated for Ted Turner's companies, and stumbled into his first Waco mural work while buying art supplies. That first wall was the drive-thru grizzly at Poppa Rollo's Pizza, bursting through the metal with a Dr Pepper. In 2016 he turned the side of Harold Waite's Pancake & Steakhouse into a Suspension Bridge held up by syrup. And in 2019 he painted Waco's whole twentieth century in greyscale downtown — the wall that remembers May 11, 1953.
Same painter, wildly different registers: comedy, breakfast, grief, and now a skeleton serenade. That range is the whole point of him.
Make it a Day of the Dead crawl
Both walls are on our Waco's Walls trail: Dinner with the Departed on Valley Mills and The Mariachis of El Charro Tapatio on North 17th. Go see them before November 2, go hungry, and order off the wall. Then find the rest on the trail or The Whole Map — free, every one of them.