Jamie’s Italian – Half Price Meals

Jamie’s Italian Portsmouth are offering Portsmouth Shoppers, Residents and Staff the chance to come in and enjoy the best of their fabulous menu for 50% off food for a limited time in February and March.

To take advantage of this great offer you will need to book online at www.jamiesitalian.com/portsmouth using the code ‘SOFTOPEN50’. Bookings of up to 6 guests and offer only valid Monday through Friday from 12.00 until 17.00 February 20th until March 2nd 2012. You may also book by contacting the restaurant directly on 02392 000595 between the hours of 9-5 Monday through Friday or via email to meghan.thomasson@jamiesitalian.com. Spaces are limited so book early to avoid disappointment! Pukka….

Photos courtesy of the delicious Southsea Food Social.

The Dead Coast – Official Trailer

Portsmouth based web-series ‘The Dead Coast‘, a drama/horror about life after a deadly virus has hit the shoes of the UK and has released the first official trailer for the show. Check out the Zombies killing it down at the park session.

They’re also looking for local actors/actresses, extras, crew and musicians to help with the production of the series. If you would liked to get involved e-mail

Science – FREE Party – Friction Machine LIVE

It’s a fresh chapter for Science, with their first soirée of 2012 taking place at the Edge of the Wedge – an intimate space stacked with plenty of musical heritage. As always they’re pushing sonic boundaries, treading the delicately blurred line between house and techno.

On the night they have selectors Lamech – aka Rich Jones, Science Chief Rich Archaic and the Backwards Disko trio of Josh, Sam & Jamie. The evening will also see an appearance from the highly tipped Friction Machine, who’s quirky and inventive live set will incorporate swirling vocals over widescreen electronica laced with sumptuous melodic textures.

And as usual they will be dressing the venue up in their own inimitable, atmoshperic style, with a suitably powerful sound system ready to incite hip movements and good times. And as the Scientists like to say, be there, or be the perimeter of an equilateral tetrahedron!

ilovedust – NEW Macho Man Randy Savage Prints

You may remember we posted about the awesome ilovedust Dead Wrestlers Society Show back in September. Well they’re back with a limited edition run of a NEW Macho Man Randy Savage print. Mad skills by the dust crew as always.

This is too hot to miss out on. I’m the tower of power. Too sweet to be sour. I’m funky like a monkey. Skies the limit. And space is the place. Ohhhhh YEAHHHHHHHH. Grab yours HERE before they get counted out of the ring.

Win a Strong Island T-Shirt – And the winner is……Mutton Geoff.

Well, it’s actually Lisa, but as the competition tides turned when everyone either guessed correctly or just copied what the last person said we changed the rules slightly. So to keep things more interesting, and seeing as naming a Seagull is much more fun we decided to take the winning pick from the obscure to the sublime responses from our readers.

Some classics for sure, and some randoms too. I’ve no related thoughts on why you would call a Seagull ‘Mutton Geoff’, but it made us laugh. So congratulations to Lisa. Email me the address you would like the tee sent too and I’ll post it out to you.

Oh, and hey, why don’t we send out some stickers and badges to the rest of the ‘contenders’ for getting involved with the comments. We’re nice like that and we appreciate your input to Strong Island.

Send your addresses to tristan@strong-island.co.uk. No cheeky cheaters…

Vinyl Jumble – King Street Tavern

Calling ALL vinyl lovers! Sam Foot is having a huge vinyl jumble tomorrow at his wonderful pub The King Street Tavern (click here for map). Expect some fine examples of some beautiful old tunes from back in the day.

He’s putting in listening stations too – gonna be like record shopping used to be!! Kicks off at 12noon, get involved! Beer and food will be served as usual.

Win a Strong Island T-Shirt

During a Spring clean over the weekend I came across a solitary Strong Island tee from our first ever run. Rather than put it in the shop we thought we would offer it to you, the readers.

How can you acquire this now rare and sold out piece of Strong Island history you ask? Well, it’s easy….

Simply comment on this post and tell us what building the ‘Dollar’s Store’ is suited above and what road it’s on and we’ll pick a random winner from the list next week. Bonus bonus points go to the best Seagull name in the form of stickers, badges and pride.

‘New York Sketchbook’ Exhibition at Sopranos

Sopranos on Palmerston Road, Southsea, has a new exhibition from Hayling based photographer Harvey Mills titled ‘New York Sketchbook’.

We’ve posted about Harvey more than a few times on Strong Island and his awesome skate photography, and even some of his NYC photographs for his website www.harveymills.com.

As well as being the guy behind the camera for Herbal Skateboards and Skateboarding Photo Magazine, Harvey is an accomplished photographer with 30 years of experience, and his image portfolio presents an eclectic and diverse range of subject matter. Talented chap.

In his own words about the project Harvey says “My challenge was to present an alternative take on vistas and aspects of New York City – a place where, with every corner turned, you stumble across familiar scenes and images. Even first-time visitors feel as if they’ve known the place all of their lives.”

All photographs are tastefully framed and for sale in Sopranos or at www.harveymills.com. And if you’re popping by to check it out you would be bonkers to pass up a bite to eat, especially considering they are running their 2 for £10 lunch menu. Meatballs! Forget about it……

They are always looking for artists to display their work for future exhibitions so get in touch if interested.

Help Hayden at The Pier – Fundraiser!

Help Hayden at The Pier is a LIVE music event put together by local musicians, DJs, promoters, business owners and people who care, to help raise funds for a little lad named Hayden!

“Hayden is a 3 year old local boy who has Cerebal Pulsy. He has just under gone an operation in America to help him walk and we’d like help pay for for the expensive after care that he now needs. Not only would this money help a little run around like every lil boy but also help ease some of the massive pressure his parents and family must be under.”

Tickets are just £6 so make sure you get involved and help in any way you can. For more information about Hayden please visit www.helphayden.co.uk and keep up to date on the fundraiser of at Facebook.

The Dead Coast – Behind the Scenes

The Dead Coast is now in rolling in full effect. Zombies have been rounded up and filming has begun for the pilot episode. It looks like serious fun. So gutted is couldn’t get down to show off my zombie skillllllllllllllllllllzzzzzz. Harriets got it down though, and man she wants to go Skating bad.

The Dead Coast are also holding a fundraising event on 5th Feb at the edge of the wedge. Its an acoustic night featuring Hometown Show, Cat Mclean, Caz Batten, Champ of the Day, Jimmy Broomfield and The Lion and The Wolf. Its £3 entry and kicks off at 8pm. Keep up to date with all their events and progress of the pilot over at their Facebook page HERE.

PRIMARY – Extended & Improved

We have some great news about our PRIMARY phonography exhibition (find out all the details here) that we can now announce:

- The deadline for submissions has now been extended to Sunday 4th March. We have had some incredible submissions but want to set aside more time to make the exhibition something really special.

- The competition is now open to up to 10 submissions from each individual. With the ability to capture many photos on your phone over the next two months we we want you to not feel restricted to just three. The same rules apply about the photos conforming to compositions using the primary colours though. If you have already submitted feel free to send more photos over as and when you please.

- The exhibition will be hosted by Albert Road’s own Bonzo Studio who are also partnering up with us in the creation of the exhibition space. More news on this soon!

- Finally, we will be running a competition as part of the exhibition where the best three photos submitted will win some incredible prizes. We will be announcing the prizes available very soon but got to say, these will be the best prize haul we have ever offered.

- We will be putting together a poster for the exhibition that will be on sale on the opening night. The poster will feature some of the best submissions and all profits from the sales will go to a local charity (details to follow soon). Due to this we need to say that any photos submitted to PRIMARY will involve you giving us permission to use them for commercial purposes, if you do not want your photo used in this way simply let us know via email.

Well, that is it for now! We really hope to drum up as much coverage locally for PRIMARY in the next couple of months so if you could Facebook/Tweet/+1 about the exhibition we would really appreciate it. We would love this exhibition to be a real reflection of the whole population of Portsmouth with everyone taking part and feeling involved.

It’s going to be a Strong Movember – Closed at £725

Righto chaps, it’s time to clean shave your boat race and get that mighty moustache on the grow in support of Movember for The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. For 30 days of November you can help support and raise awareness through selflessly parading your top lip for charity.

You can sign up yourself, as I’m sure many of you already have, or you can join the Strong Island team and seek out sponsorship as a team. Through the Strong Island Movember page you can ask people to join the group, make donations, upload photos and post updates via the MoSpace page, Facebook and Twitter.

Head over to www.mobro.co/StrongIsland if you would like to get involved and grow a Strong Moustache to help raise awareness, or simply head over to www.uk.movember.com and sign up to personally raise money.

The funds raised in the UK support the number one and two male specific cancers – prostate and testicular cancer. The funds raised are directed to programmes run directly by Movember and our men’s health partners, The Prostate Cancer Charity and the Institute of Cancer Research. Together, these channels work together to ensure that Movember funds are supporting a broad range of innovative, world-class programmes in line with our strategic goals in the areas of awareness and education, survivorship and research.

Poster: Tristan Savage