The Chicago Tamale Guy Tracker
In Chicago there are a couple men who go around from bar to bar selling delicious hot tamales through various neighborhoods in Chicago. They can usually be found in parts of Lakeview and Lincoln Square earlier in the night to all over the Ukranian Village, Bucktown and Wicker Park as the night goes on. These are friendly and professional gentlemen who can put a smile on anyones face. Since everyone loves late night tamales, especially when the tamale guys deliver hot fresh tamales right to your bar stool. The tamale guys can be hard to track down and after some conversations about these mysterious tamale guys, my friends and I came up with a great idea; What if it were possible to follow the tamale guys via Twitter as they made their rounds from bar to bar? A community that would tweet when and where they saw one of the tamale guys and what bar/location they were at, thus allowing all of the tamale guys followers to see when and where he has been on a given night. After a couple weeks and a few lines of code,the Tamale Tracker was born.

Here's how it works
- Twitter users send a @reply to @tamaletracker when they see the Tamale Guy at their favorite pub in Chicago. Just like this @TamaleTracker claudio at the inner town pub! tamale goodness :)
- Then a scheduled listening service that fires off every five minutes looks for any replies that been sent to @TamaleTracker.
– When the service sees a new tweet, the @TamaleTracker account then retweets that message through @TamaleTracker with the senders user id. Just like this claudio at the innertown pub! tamale goodness :) ~djskinnyfat
- Twitter users sign up to follow @TamaleTracker.
- A lot of people, like us for instance, have chosen to recieve text message alerts when @TamaleTracker tweets to keep an up to the minute status of the badass tamales.

Here are some links where the Tamale Tracker has been mentioned in the Chicago media

Chicago Tribune - 'Tamale Guy' an icon at bars where kitchens close early
Gapers Block - Tamale Guy Tracker
Serious Eats - A List of Street Food Vendors
Chicago Public Radio - Hacking the Web for Good

New! San Francisco has followed up the Chicago Tamale Tracker with their own Tamale Lady Tracker powered by the Spotd Service. http://twitter.com/goodtamales