Southsea Fest

Time is slowly approaching for this years Southsea Fest, and with more acts, venues, events and randomness than you can shake a Cat O’ Nine Tail at you’d better get your tickets soon. This year is shaping up to be much bigger and much better than last years and last year was an amazing day out on Albert Road. Josie and her Press Gang are working super hard to create a day you won’t want to miss.

Keep up to date on Facebook and also MySpace where you can buy tickets from.

And to add to the whole occasion this years Southsea Fest is the same day as the Annual Talk Like A Pirate Day.

Hong Kong Gardeners Club 1st Birthday Party

The exceptionally good folk at HKGC are celebrating their 1st Birthday this Thursday at The Fat Fox on Albert Road. With music supplied by Swim Team, Speed The Collapse and special guests all for £3 on the door you can’t really go wrong on a Thursday.

Abigail say “Make the most of our events while you can…”

Portsmouth Creative Movement Free Art Giveaway

The Portsmouth Creative Movement are at it again. In fact they never stop. Drawing on the past success of last years ‘It’s Your’s Take It’ event on Southsea Seafront the guys are shouting out for artists and artwork to be part of the Free Art Giveaway.

These events are always lots of fun and people get to pick up some fantastic work. I’ve been lucky enough to be involved in a few of their operations, and even have some pretty cool deckchair work coming up with Claire from PCM as well. Watch this space.

Island Hopping

Last Saturday a small group of us rode off Portsea to cruise over to Hayling Island and meet up with the girls and also JGDD and her entourage outside The Ferry Boat. At only £2 a pint and with various meal deals it makes for a nice change to hop over the drink and have a few beers with a different view for a change.

Bored X Fergus are making stuff for the freaks.

The guys at Bored have had this project under their hats for a while now and can finally announce the release of the collaborative Deckchairs between themselves and Fergus Purcell of Tonite. His ethos is as follows – “My mission is to make stuff for the Freaks! Whether they were rockers or ravers, or punx or Hippies or Skaters or just Deep Space Travellers!”

The Deckchairs themselves have been produced by the local business here, Southsea Deckchairs and have been described by the Daily Telegraph as “The quintessential British deckchair.”

Yet more quality work and another great collaboration from Bored. Don’t forget to pop in store and check out the new Jubru Tee and to just say hi really. The release date is August 1st. For more information check out www.blog.boredofsouthsea.co.uk

HKGC presents The Dawn Chorus with The B of the Bang

The Hong Kong Gardeners Club presents an acoustic preview of The Dawn Chorus’ second album…

Portsmouth’s own The Dawn Chorus write beautiful indie-folk-punk songs which make you sing along and grin like a loon. Their debut album “The Big Adventure” was full of joyous moments and carefully crafted songs about girls and disappointment with the music scene. They went on tour and played with Frank Turner on the pier. Frank Turner liked them so much he asked them to play with him some more. Then they wrote their second album which may be called “The Carnival Leaves Town” (or not) which will may also feature the credits “Frank Turner appears courtesy of…”. Yep, Frank Turner likes ‘em. And we love them. So come and see them play some of their new songs.

Wet Weather Skating

The weather has been miserable recently, a couple of the local skaters (including Bored team member Jak Tonge) went up to London and hid from the rain and filmed a little edit for Drawing Boards. Fingers crossed the weather is meant to be nice this weekend, have a good one.

Nineveh Gallery – Art Sale

Nineveh Gallery, bookshop and cafe located in Havant is holding an Art Sale this Saturday 25th and Sunday 26th. Loads of art work and selection of books will be at discount prices and there will be a BBQ from 12 O’clock.

Nineveh can be found at 11 The Pallant, Havant, PO9 1BE. For more details contact Mark at nineveharts@yahoo.co.uk.

Richard Walker – Graphic Resort

You’ll no doubt be very familiar with Richard Walker’s graphic design work, much of it has given a strong and recognisable identity to everything Love Albert Road. To check out more of Richard’s work his portfolio is available online at www.graphicresort.com.

Tommy – Reminder

A quick reminder about the Kings Theatre showing the film Tommy tomorrow night. Tickets are only £4 and you get to see Southsea (and The Who) as they were in the 70s. See the Facebook event for all the details.

The 2nd Strong Island Ale – Dry Dock No. 1

As you may know each year we run a home brew competition in February where the winning brew has the opportunity to be brewed by Irving & Co Brewing Co. and sold around the city in the summer. Last year’s brew, the Strong Island Hopper Ale, was hugely successful being one of Inving’s best selling ales and selling out so quickly it went through a second brew run. This year’s winning ale is Dry Dock No. 1, originally brewed by Lee Immins, went on sale in some of Portsmouth and Southsea’s pubs over the weekend.

We spoke to The Hole in The Wall in Southsea who said the new ale went down a storm with it being their best seller on Sunday and with almost two barrels empty by the end of the Bank Holiday weekend. Those guys at the Hole in The Wall and their regular ale drinkers know their stuff so for us this was amazing early news with the ale.

To officially launch Dry Dock No. 1 we are having a launch party with the lovely souls at The Belle Isle on Thursday evening. The ale will be on full flow, come down and try a pint or two. As well as being on sale all around the city the ale will also be available in Chichester’s Belle Isle too, so you can drink it away from home for the first time too.

The Isle Of Wight Randonnee 2012 – Team Strong Island

Just over a year ago, a group of Strong Islanders were sat on the Isle of Wight ferry on our way to the yearly Randonnee cycling event; 60 miles around the island spread across 5 checkpoints. Whilst on the crossing we couldn’t help but admire various enthusiasts and their custom team jerseys. Fast forward a year and it is my great pleasure to unveil the Strong Island cycling jersey. Made as a one off for the event, the jersey is our way of representing this city and all the values that come with it. Thanks to the combined designing efforts of Chris Ballingall and Tristan Savage, we were able to produce this clean, retro looking jersey that 11 of Southsea’s finest could wear to conquer the island’s endless hills. Well done chaps.