48The Building With Tattoos

When Waco's oldest tattoo shop bought the building a beloved electronics company had called home for decades, it did exactly what you'd hope: it tattooed the building. Every stone column is now a flash sheet — a rose weeping petals, dice mid-tumble, a horseshoe stamped GOOD LUCK, a frog in headphones the size of dinner rolls, a woman's portrait torn straight through the rock like the wall is showing you what's under its skin. Keep circling — the sheet keeps going: Frankenstein's monster scowling beside the PIERCING sign, a skull steeping in a corked potion bottle over an 8-ball and a run of aces, an octopus hugging the porch light in two of its eight arms, and a woman in red sunglasses lifting her face to the Texas sun while a monarch butterfly comes in to land. And glowering beneath the shop sign, in soft blues: Michelangelo's David, five hundred years old, rendered like the world's most patient walk-in customer.

Around the side, the shop's masterpiece of civic mischief: a grizzly the size of King Kong scales the ALICO building while helicopters swarm and a purple biplane banks in from the clouds. If a giant bear climbing Waco's skyscraper seems farfetched, remember the real ALICO has stood since 1911 and shrugged off the 1953 tornado. It can handle one bear. Park once and you get a two-for-one: the Wall of Georges waits one lot over — floating heads and a tiny cowboy, no appointment needed.