This summer, Curbside Splendor is publishing Tony Fitzpatrick's Dime Stories, a collection of the columns he's been writing for Newcity since 2012.
Dime Stories is our first full-color, hardcover art book—the debut project of our initiative to publish art alongside the extraordinary voices we've brought to independent literature. In the next year, we're publishing Kedzie Avenue by The Illustrated Press, a graphic portrait of Chicago and its people, connected by a single street. Following that, two of our forthcoming books will map the history of Chicago's music culture, including The Empty Bottle Chicago: Twenty-Plus Years of Piss, Sh*t, & Broken Urinals, edited by John Dugan, with a foreword by John Darnielle, and My Kind of Sound: The Secret History of Chicago Music, by Steve Krakow (but you may know him as Plastic Crimewave).
But all of that starts here, with Tony Fitzpatrick's Dime Stories. Longtime followers of the column will find all of the very best here—Fitzpatrick's accounts of getting tattoos, selling museum-collected art, and walking his dog Chooch, alongside poignant tributes to Lou Reed and Studs Terkel, his take on the ever-shifting art world, and his sharp-tongued takedowns of Chicago's most corrupt politicians. The collection, too, marks a journey; Fitzpatrick shifts his stance on gun ownership, discovers community in unexpected places, and mourns the loss of dear friends. And after years of considering leaving Chicago for New Orleans, Fitzpatrick decides to stay. Dime Stories is a story of an artist falling back in love with his city.
To celebrate Tony, his work, and the book, we've created a pre-order campaign which includes limited edition artwork signed by Tony. Check it out, and if you can, support the book!