5 min readMexico CityJun 15, 2026 01:17 PM IST
First published on: Jun 14, 2026 at 07:17 AM IST
The colours are loud and vivid in Mexico City. The home team’s jersey is blazing green, the Azteca turns into a giant green monster with a thousand hands on match days. The food stalls that stream endlessly from one street to another, like the coaches of a train, jostle for attention with splashes of fluorescence, overlarge fonts and quirky designs.
The brighter the better, says Martina, who runs a tortas stall near the stadium. “The shop needs to stand out. Every food shop in Mexico City sells the same snacks and food, but you need to show you are different,” she says.
The shop is named Stadium Tortas. The name board has a picture of Pele and Diego Maradona, face to face, as though they are striding out of the tunnel for a game. The menu on the storefront has tortas named after famous footballers. Pele, Maradona, Alfredo di Stephano, Franz Beckenbauer and local king Hugo Sanchez hoard prime real estate on her showcase and are displayed prominently. The rest, Zinedine Zidane, Mario Kempes and Iker Casillas are bunched in a different section, and priced lower.
There is no dearth of hand-painted ones in Mexico City. Every wall, even in plusher locales, has a mural or graffiti. Every mural is a story, the locals believe. (Express photo by Sandip G)
The theme was an idea of her football tragic husband.
“He told me, ‘most of them come here to watch matches’. So if we name them after famous footballers, people would be curious and the business will improve. Of course, our tortas are the tastiest in the vicinity, but you need to sell it and draw more customers,” she says.
Business is brisk and foreigners comprise half the scattered queue.
ALSO READ | Mexico’s ‘cathedral of football’, the stadium Maradona never really left
It’s not only the menu but the graffiti beneath the showcase that woos attention. Hers was recently done. “Made by computer,” she shouts.
It is a melange of Mexican footballers on both sides. At the centre is a young, chubby chef with a tortas. She says she would have preferred hand-painted ones, but there has been a dearth of painters and those who are there quote exorbitant prices.
There is no dearth of hand-painted ones in the city. Every wall, even in plusher locales, has a mural or graffiti. Every mural is a story, the locals believe. The walls of stately buildings have issued a stern warning: “Graffiti strictly prohibited; those found would be shot!”
World in a city
A giant fish adorns several walls in the city centre. The locals call it the axolotl, a kind of salamander native to the ancient waterways of Mexico City that has existed since the Aztec days. “The size is only in the painting, it is actually smaller than your palm,” says Federico, who runs a tacos shop, named Taco de Enorme. The Big Taco.
All stalls display the cuisine prominently. It’s not merely tacos, tortas or quesadilla, but “giant tacos” “super tacos” or “monster tortillas”.
In some, animals become characters. A chicken shack’s hoarding is a chicken slaughtering another chicken with a huge axe. There were more but under the previous mayor’s orders, signs from nearly 2,000 stalls were erased.
Every street in Mexico City leads to a marker, colourful clothes swaying in the light breeze from thick racks. Vendors selling grilled corn swirl in their rusted bicycles, blowing loud whistles.
“She wanted to beautify the city, she only destroyed its charm,” Federico says. Many are scrubbed bare to their metallic bones. And what does his successor do: Paint most walls with axolotls. “Just to scare kids!”
On either side of Avenida de los Insurgentes, one of the longest avenues in the world measuring 30 kilometres, streets flow into streets, Paris to Berlin, Berlin to Vienna. There are Zurich and London too. They have turned naming streets into a wholehearted business, cutting across cultures and continents and vocations.
For music: Bach and Beethoven; for literature: Shakespeare and Victor Hugo; for geography: Himalayas and Alps; for medicine: Cardiology and Orthodontist; animals: Shrimp and Squid. As many as 24 are named Peace Streets. Not far from it is the High Tension Street (although it’s calmer than many peace streets, the locals banter). It helps that Mexico City has 70,000-odd streets to name.
Every street leads to a marker, colourful clothes swaying in the light breeze from thick racks. Vendors selling grilled corn swirl in their rusted bicycles, blowing loud whistles. Grocers have a different modus operandi: to play a popular jingle from their phone. Some have ancient tape recorders too, which is far from extinct in the country.
Everything, of course, is wrapped in colours that first sting the eyes and then fill the tummy. It’s the vivid and loud colours that one takes away from Mexico too.
Clockwise: World cup graffiti on Mexico City’s streets; a tortilla shopwith Pele and maradona pics; awomanwalks past street art. (Express photo by Sandip G) 
There is no dearth of hand-painted ones in Mexico City. Every wall, even in plusher locales, has a mural or graffiti. Every mural is a story, the locals believe. (Express photo by Sandip G)
Every street in Mexico City leads to a marker, colourful clothes swaying in the light breeze from thick racks. Vendors selling grilled corn swirl in their rusted bicycles, blowing loud whistles.
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