from the series, themed cocktails, and a projector complete with multiplayer Sonic games. Few people will understand why hearing a crowd of people drunkenly singing along to “Escape from the City” from Sonic Adventure 2 makes me a little emotional, but it did.

The greater gaming community generally became my social hub, I felt comfortable online chatting with other people about games and the latest events. My timeline on twitter consisted of people I knew from forums, games writers, various fandom members. However an odd element started creeping into the situation, the writers started becoming more negative about themselves, and writing more and more negative articles about the community. At first I simply accepted it, there are always people who go too far and in the heat of theA study released last March found that in 2014, there were 950 single-family and duplex homes sitting empty in Vancouver and 9,750 vacant apartments

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In 2013, a study by the City of Vancouver found that roughly 20 percent of condos in the upscale downtown neighbourhood of Coal Harbour were sitting empty.

Today (June 22), Mayor Gregor Robertson held a press conference with those towers behind him and pledged the city would implement a tax on vacant properties, with or without the help of the province.

“An empty homes tax is really a promising first step to create a more level playing field in the market, and also to ensure that there is more rental housing available in a city where vacancy is almost non-existent," he said.

The