Strong Island

Matt O’Neill

Matt O’Neill at Leigh Park Skatepark

A quick edit of Southsea skater Matt O’Neill skating the Leigh Park skatepark before the rain set in. Matt and his wife have left Southsea for a new life in Melbourne, Australia, wishing them the best of luck in their new adventure!

P.S. Song is a little NSFW, just so you know

New Matt O Piece

Southsea artist, skateboarder and OG graffiti artist Matt O worked on a new piece down at the Fratton Park alleys, amazing as always.

Matt O’Neill Quick Clip

A couple of tricks from Southsea skate legend Matt O’Neill:

Peanut Bowl

The Peanut Bowl at Southsea Skatepark is iconic in UK skateboarding, a regular feature in the photos of skateboarding magazines going all the way back to the 70s. The bowl itself is due a facelift soon with some paint and I grabbed a few clips of Matt O’Neill skating it on Sunday. It’s still one of the most fun aspects of our little skatepark.

Video and photo by Paul Gonella.

Strong Island Charity Raffle Prize Update

Excuse the really long picture post again. It’s another little update to keep you up to speed with our 2nd Birthday Party at The Belle Isle this Thursday 30th September and I thought you would like to know what’s on offer as the date gets closer.

The tickets will be £1 each or £8 for 10 and will be available on the door on the night only, so grab a strip with your FREE Strong Island Ice Tea (limited drinks so get there early). Pet Sounds will provide the background music with a Strong Island VS Pet Sounds Playlist to accompany this relaxed social.

We will call the winning numbers sometime around 10pm. Listen for the bell…

All the donations to the Raffle will be available to win on the night and all of the proceeds are going to The Portsmouth Autism Support Network and The Portsmouth Lifeboat Station.

We look forward to seeing you.


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Strong Island 2nd Birthday & Charity Raffle

We hope you can all make it along to our 2nd Birthday Party at The Belle Isle next Thursday 30th. It’s shaping up to be quite a nice evening with a few friends new & old, accompanied with some drinks and a cheeky Raffle.

All the donations to the Raffle will be available to win on the night and all the proceeds are going to The Portsmouth Autism Support Network and The Portsmouth Lifeboat Station.

Raffle tickets will be available on the door on the night only, so grab a strip with your FREE Strong Island Ice Tea (limited drinks so get there early). Pet Sounds will provide the background music with a Strong Island VS Pet Sounds Playlist to accompany this relaxed social.

Prizes have kindly been donated from the following people: The Belle Isle / Bored / Portsmouth University / Paul Gonella / Claire Sambrook / Desperados Beer / Ian Parmiter / Rob Trigg / Wallspace gallery / Head Hairdressing / FarkFK / Southsea Fixed Gear / James Weaver / Mikee Ayling / Matt O’Neill / Diana Goss / Caleigh Illburn / Cat Vaughan / Steve Bomford / Owain Harris / Miki Organic / Louise Bush / Nick Hicking / Candice @ Inksquatch / MyDogSighs / Paul Thurlow and more to come. Prizes include tee shirts, drinks, hair cuts, photo shoots, art, prints, meals, photography and more besides. Check the photos below for just a taster of what’s on offer.


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Matt O’Neill

Matt is one of Southsea and Portsmouth’s legendary skateboarders since all the way back to the 80s. This footage was filmed all in one evening about a year ago, still one of the best skaters to ever step on a board on this fair isle. › Continue reading

Features

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

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