The walls that channel Cherry Creek are lined with nearly 50 pieces of public art. Runners and cyclists on the trail pass murals of geometric patterns, misshapen cartoon characters and colorful hummingbirds.
And then there were the Taco Bell hot sauce packets.
For more than two years, 27 packets of spicy taco sauce have clung to a patch of concrete wall protruding from the creekbed near Delgany Street.
The packets hung in three tidy rows along the concrete wall. And then there was the title, “27 PACKETS OF TACO BELL DIABLO SAUCE,” written in a lumpy brown material of unknown origins.
“The new Banksy!” one Reddit user proclaimed in a thread about the sauce packet artwork in 2024.
But just like one of Banksy’s signature pieces, this one wasn’t meant to last forever. Not exactly.
Who puts sauce on a wall?
Diablo Sauce is Taco Bell’s spiciest sauce, according to the chain restaurant’s spice spectrum. Reviewers have described it as “flavorless heat” or “chemical pepper.” (This reporter has a low spice tolerance and can’t speak to those descriptors.)
This particular Diablo Sauce belongs to Tom Dorsa, which you can tell because he wrote @TomDorsa next to the packets.
Dorsa, a professional appliance repairman who describes himself as an absurdist and a surrealist, told Denverite there was no deeper meaning to the art piece. It was inspired, maybe unsurprisingly, by a trip to Taco Bell.
“I only ordered two items and I had a bag full of sauce packets that I was not going to use, that I didn't need or want,” Dorsa said.
Once it was installed, Dorsa would occasionally dip back into the creek for maintenance — in case a sauce packet mysteriously disappeared.
“I would keep a stockpile of Diablo sauce packets just in case I needed to run by and add another one, just to maintain 27 in their perfect rows,” he said.
He’s also installed other absurdist pieces along Cherry Creek, including gluing a DVD of the Pixar movie “Cars,” labeled “The Greatest Movie Of All Time,” to a wall. But his other works have been erased by the city within days or weeks.
Only the sauce packets have persisted. Until now.
The paint crew came at last.
To be clear, the Diablo sauce is still on the wall — but now it’s encased in a layer of off-white paint. The words “27 PACKETS OF TACO BELL DIABLO SAUCE” and the Taco Bell branding have been obliterated by the paint, leaving only the ghostly shape of 27 packets of Taco Bell Diablo sauce.
“They just painted over it,” Dorsa said. “It was the landlord special.”
Denver Parks and Recreation did not comment on why this particular piece was painted over, but noted that its crew regularly “cover tags” in the area.
And sadly for Denver’s absurdism enthusiasts, Dorsa said he won’t be restoring it.
“I think it's a finished art project, and I honestly think it's perfect,” he said. “It is funnier than something I could organically create. If I had done that myself, that wouldn't necessarily be as humorous, but that it was a preexisting piece that then got painted over, but is still there, like Egyptian hieroglyphics, is hilarious.”
In 2018, Banksy’s “Girl with Balloon” was destroyed by a secret paper shredder immediately after it was sold in an auction for $1.3 million. Several years after the shredding, it sold for a nearly $25 million profit, even in its damaged state.
Perhaps 27 packets of hot sauce can find new value in their desecration, too.
