Support the Seafront Cycle Route

The new Seafront Cycle Route needs your help. Most of you will have noticed by now that the first phase of the seafront cycle route is being built – indeed a long stretch of it is all but complete. You may also have noticed that there has been considerable criticism of the route in the local press. The loss of parking spaces in exchange for the new parallel system is creating a lot of controversy. I fully understand peoples comments regarding fewer parking spaces at Eastney, but honestly, when is it ever full. Even in high summer it’s not difficult to find a space. I ride home everyday and often take the extend route along the seafront from Eastney and more often than not there are dozens of spaces and at least 2 people reversing out in to my path.

It is vitally important that we show Portsmouth City Council how popular this route is – otherwise there is a great risk that the decision makers will get cold feet when asked to approve phase 2. Therefore the Portsmouth Cycle Forum please ask all of you to write to Simon Moon, head of traffic and transportation at Portsmouth City Council expressing support for the seafront cycle route.

Support the Seafront Cycle Route by contacting Simon Moon directly HERE, or better still a unique letter or email always has more impact, so if you have time to write please use the following contact details.

Simon Moon
Portsmouth City Council
Civic Offices
Guildhall Square
Portsmouth
Hampshire, PO1 2BG

email: simon.moon@portsmouthcc.gov.uk

Photo : Hilary Reed

Tags: Pompey Bug, Seafront Cycle Route

Google Maps – Street View

Portsmouth now has street view enabled on Google Maps, giving an interesting perspective of the city. Good to see it was a nice, sunny day in Southsea when the car drove through. Sadly no Old Portsmouth though.

Tags: Google

Pompey Trust

I always freely admit to not knowing a single thing about football, but everyone I know follows Pompey and shows great passion for them, which in turn makes me proud. I’ve even signed up to the Membership Trust and handed over my hard earned cash to help. You too can help by joining up HERE.

The following is a quick message from Ben Mills who words it much better then myself from a fans point of view. “Our aim is to bring about responsible, democratic representation at Portsmouth Football Club and so help promote the highest standards of transparent governance, accountability and embed Portsmouth FC deeper into its community through greater communication and co-operation with its fans.”

www.pompeytrust.com

Photo : Hellomatt

Tags: Pompey Trust, Portsmouth FC

Coming soon to Palmerston Road, Southsea

As sad as the loss of a once national retail treasure is it really good to see that the empty Woolworths on Palmerston Road in Southsea has a new owner. Portsmouth City Council has agreed a lease on the property for an exciting new state-of-the-art library, contact centre and café is coming to the heart of Southsea’s shopping centre.

The building will be re-developed to create a library, IT learning zone, community space for local groups, contact centre for council services and café. We hope that the new library, contact centre and café could attract almost 80,000 visitors a year. This is an increase of 16,000 on the number of visitors to Elm Grove library which will be closed as part of the scheme.

Councillor Lee Hunt, Member for Culture and Leisure said: “This is a once in the lifetime opportunity to relocate a library into the heart of Southsea. The IT learning zone, community space and café will also broaden the range of services available to all members of the community who live in or visit the area.”

Tags: Southsea Library

Keeping out of the pub!

Me and Andy went on a short bike ride this afternoon in a vain attempt to keep out of the pub and work off our hangovers. It was pretty fresh out to say the least and although it felt like it was doing us good our bodies were really crying for a hair of the dog. Needless to say we failed, but at least we did something instead of stewing on the sofa. Now off to DJ Format. Coming?

A few more random snaps from today are over on my Flickr.

Tags: Tristan Savage

PCM in The News

Portsmouth Creative Movement had themselves some great coverage in The News last week about the Hope Street hoardings. Look out for these guys, their working hard to enhance areas of the city that get ignored, as well as creating amazing individual and collaborative pieces of art. More to come very soon.

Click the image below for a closer look.

Scan : Claire Sambrook

Tags: Portsmouth Creative Movement

Telly Savalas Looks at Portsmouth

There’s more than ‘meats’ the eye to Portsmouth. A city where everyone in the know goes. Classic stuff. Kojak takes time between sucking lollipops and fighting crime to give us the 411 on Portsmouth city through the ages. Love the eclectic soundtrack. Thanks to Harry for posting this up for us in a previous article. Here’s looking at you Portsmouth…

Tags: Telly Savalas Looks at Portsmouth

Vintage Photography – Sunny Southsea

Big thanks to Khalid who sent over these vintage photographs scanned from The Images of Portsmouth (1993). We have a small selection so I’ll put one page up each week.

Love this first shot of the band stand on the common in the 1920s showing how the site was originally used before the Skatepark was built around it in the 70s. So many deckchairs, it must have been big business back then. It’s a shame they didn’t keep the bandstand as it was with the little steps and iron railing. It’s a little different NOW as Marcus’s ariel shot shows. Click the image to see the high res scan up close.

The Hope Street Hopefuls

This Saturday and Sunday saw the Portsmouth Creative Movement and associated friends get busy on the derelict land hoarding at Hope Street. The PCM group and Sifer Design gained clearance from Portsmouth Council (who also donated £1000 worth of paint) to paint the whole thing, and believe me, it’s not only freaking huge, but very impressive. Seriously, go check it out.

Anything but your normal ’street artists’ the PCM are really making a name for themselves in and around city with work going up everywhere. Look out for future events including a collaboration piece with myself and a few members down at Southsea Skatepark.

Photos : Claire Sambrook & My Dog Sighs

Tags: Hope Street, Portsmouth Council, Portsmouth Creative Movement, Sifer Design

Portsmouth Cycle Forum – Vote for a Logo

The guys over at the PCM really do a lot more for cycling in this city than most people would generally know. Always campaigning and keeping people up to date on all things cycling and the city, they always have their ears to the cycle lane. If you haven’t checked their website yet head over and be sure to save the RSS feed. Always updated.

For a fresh face in 2010 they want to update their logo and help make it more appealing to all audiences, including younger riders around the city. Voting is now open for the new Pompey Bug logo and closes February 11th.

Check out the logos HERE and then vote HERE.

Tags: Pompey Bug, Portsmouth Cycle Forum

Old Portsmouth

I found this photo of Old Portsmouth shot form The Spinnaker last night. I don’t think I’ve seen it shot from this angle before. It almost looks like another town at first glance. Some great details. Cricket in full swing, all the catchers traps on the roof of the fish market, enjoying a beer at The A Bar, Lawn Bowls, all on a cracking sunny day. Click on the image for full size.

Photo – eNil

Tags: Old Portsmouth

Vision for The Hard

“Establishing a strong role for The Hard as a distinctive city gateway and vibrant waterfront destination is a central component of the vision for the area.”

“Vision: to shape The Hard into a vibrant waterfront destination, building on its function as a key city gateway and its reputation as an area of historic character and charm. New passenger facilities, cultural opportunities and places to live, to work, to stay, to eat and to relax will enhance the experience of visitors and residents alike. The creation of a distinctive public realm will revitalise and transform the area.”

Overview details include, materials, architectural lighting, designing out crime, green infrastructures, conservation, cycling and so forth as well as proposals for individual areas including the long row of arches on Ordnance Row and opening galleries and cafes on Queen St & College St whilst maintaining all the original characteristics of some of the buildings.

Some pretty interesting proposals are available to view and read HERE.

Tags: Vision for The Hard

The Tricorn

It’s fair to say that we all loved The Tricorn outside of it’s it intent. A classic example of people reinventing architecture far beyond it’s original purpose. This short film doesn’t delve too deeply in to the many uses and inspirations The Tricorn had to offer, but it’s still a nice watch.

“An imaginative portrait of a futuristic concrete experiment of a shopping centre (‘the ugliest building in the world’ according to Prince Charles), built in the 1960s coastal town of Portsmouth, England. Loved or loathed, it developed a passionate cult following of artists and skateboarders but has now lost the battle for life.”

Directed by David Ferrone and Martin Fickling.

Edit: Strong Island reader Martin sent us this. The Tricorn lives on, in LEGO. Outstanding.

Tags: The Tricorn

Hitler’s reaction to The Registry closing down.

This is just classic. I’ve seen a few others before. I think I saw one about accidentally using Arial instead of Helvetica, funny stuff. This one however is just hilarious, if you know the Portsmouth pub scene. More so if you’ve ever ben a student.

Tags: Hitler's reaction to The Registry closing

Rolling right Inuit part II

Following on from the previous post about the Igloo seen on Southsea Common, Khalid Saleh was kind enough to get in contact with some more information and some photos. It took Khalid and 6 of his friends 5 and a half hours to build the Igloo using what looks like icecream tubs and glow sticks were donated by passers by from the Navy.

It’s still standing today and Meridian will be doing a short interview with them. Not sure when that will air, but hopefully I’ll catch it.

Proper.

Tags: Southsea Igloo

Who needs toes…

…when there’s so much fun to be had. If you were one of the many people who couldn’t get out of Southsea to work, or simply had the day off anyway, then chances are you took advantage of a real rarity. It’s rare enough to snow these day, let alone settle and let alone settle on the coast.

Although I had to make up for yesterdays lose of work, it was well worth it. Hundreds of people ventured down the seafront to enjoy the snow and have a play. A real sense of community and comradery was felt. Passers by saying hello or giving that knowing nod as if to say ‘yeah, bloody slippery out isn’t it…’

More the rest of my photos over on my Flickr

Tags: Southsea Snow

Christmas Tree Recycling

You can compost your real Christmas Tree this year at the Port Solent recycling centre, open 8am to 4pm everyday except Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day.

You can also compost it at one of our specific Christmas Tree drop-off days, which are on Saturday 9th and Sunday 10th January 9am-2pm, at Victoria Avenue car park in Southsea and Burrfields Road recreation ground car park in Copnor. Please remember to remove all the decorations first!

www.portsmouth.gov.uk

Tags: Christmas Tree Recycling

Metropolis

Good friend of Strong Island Mark Persaud of COR fame and fortune is currently in his first year on Graphic Design (Communication Design) at Portsmouth University and has asked if we could kindly help put the word out about his current project in hope that people might pick up on it and join in.

“My focus for Metropolis is Journey’s through the city and how people move through and use space. As part of this I’ve printed 100 postcards, put a second class stamp on them all and spread them up and down the city. Well, that’s my task for today anyway. The experiment is completely anonymous, however, I’d like to raise awareness of these cards being out there so that if peeps see one they might be more inclined to post it back.”

Thanks for the parcel too mate. Always a pleasure. Shame I can’t make Boxing Day, it’s gonna be huge.

Tags: graphic design, Mark Persuad, Metropolis

Portsmouth Climate Action Network

View the large poster HERE

Tags: Portsmouth Climate Action Network

More ridiculous bicycle hate comments…

I’m sure some of you read the article ‘New Seafront Cycle Route!’ and then the second article related to comments about said cycle route on The News website.

Well the comments keep coming and even a bit of arguing and some straight up cyclist hatred. Click though to the end of page 2 for the retarded comment “I no longer recycle anything, drive a 3.5ltr 4×4, fly at least once a month and actively refuse to give way to cyclists“. Luckily he hates England too and is off to live in the USA. Nice fellow…

Photo – PompegBUG

Tags: cycle lanes