When you did S.F. I see that you were on the Embarcadero for quite a while. but it doesn’t look like you were on it long enough to get to the Ferry Building. Lots of good stuff there! 

That’s where we had lunch, actually, turning west afterward (there’s a blobby bit on the GPS tracklog there, since we wandered around a bit).  I had a lot of stuff at the Ferry Building, including roast beef sushi, bacon from Prather Ranch, and a meat cone from Boccalone.  Oh, and a cupcake from Miette.  We weren’t there during the farmers market, though.  (I’ve done that myself a few other times).

That’s an awesome tradition!

Does anyone ever switch shoes…during the day?

Not this year, but about half of the people on the Manhattan Death March used the stop in Central Park for a shoe and/or sock swap.
 
Not to steal the focus from Chicago, but here are the tracklogs from Manhattan and SF:
 
[/url]
[/url]

Next stop was a fair bit west on Chicago Ave: Hoosier Mama Pie Company.
[/url]
It’s a small and narrow store, but what they don’t have in the display case, they’ve got in one of several racks in back:
[/url]
How was the pie?  It was phenomenal.  Here is my perfectly done coffee cream pie (which I’ve never actually seen before, but makes sense): perfect crust, creamy filling, and real smooth cream for the topping:
[/url]
My buddy Kevin’s apple pie was so good he started hacking into it before I could get a photo:
[/url]

Nice start kaszeta!  I see a lot of old “friends” so far.  You don’t say on what day of the week your Death March took place, but I can tell you if it was a weekend, you were smart to hit Don Pedro early in the morning.

We did the Death March on 5/5.  The staff at Don Pedro mentioned that they were already unusually busy for a Saturday due to Cinco de Mayo.  They moved three full trays of meat and chicharones out the door in the 15 minutes we were there.  But none of the 8:30 am business was eat in except us.  This worked for us here.  At Al’s, we had to wait for them to open.  But it also meant having to skip some good places since they weren’t open yet.  Ahh, the tradeoffs… (if we had started later, we’d have the other problem on the tail end, since we didn’t get to our dinner location until 7pm.  It takes some serious time to walk that far)
 

Everyone seems to live in relative peace and harmony in spite of that crossover competition.

Mario is an excessively friendly and outgoing guy.  He told us several other Italian Ice places to check out, and told us he believes in never badmouthing your competition, since he’d rather get along with everyone.
 

What a great tradition.  And that carnitas photo is drool worthy!  Looking forward to the next chunk.

We love Death Marches.  Still trying to figure out where to do next year (short list includes Boston, Philly, and DC).  Have another group I’m associated with that does something similar every fall in the LA area as well.

The third stop was a Death March Tradition: Beard Papa Cream Puffs.  More or less by coincidence, both Manhattan and San Francisco’s routes had us stopping for cream puffs, and since Chicago has a location as well, it was obligatory that we stop.  For those that haven’t indulged, Beard Papa makes some seriously good cream puffs, even if the mascot is a bit creepy:
[/url]
[/url]
(as an aside, Beard Papa is located in the basement of the mostly-empty Block 37 shopping mall.  This is worth noting, since Block 37 has probably the finest publicly-available free restrooms for downtown)
After getting cream-puffed, we headed north on State
[/url]
[/url]
until we got to Chicago Ave, where we headed left.

After Don Pedro’s, we backtracked a bit and walked north on Racine to Taylor street into what used to be (and still somewhat is) an Italian neighborhood, for one of the oldest Italian Beef stands, Al’s #1 Italian Beef:
[/url]
Where I went for a small Italian Beef, with hots, “wet”:
[/url]
One of the messiest food items I know, but I always love a good Italian beef sandwich, and Al’s delivers one of the best I’ve had.
 
Then, we crossed the street to Mario’s Italian Lemonade.  We actually met the owner (Mario, the second generation Mario to own the joint) while waiting for Al’s to open, and he was really friendly and talked about how much he likes the neighborhood and people that visit).  We ended up getting some Italian Ice before walking on through UIC to downtown:
[/url]
[/url]
After 3 hours of walking and eating, we arrived downtown at The Bean:
[/url]