Toronto is Booming, but how?

[Epi]

Originally Posted by lezgotolondon

@EPI

This is why Toronto needs more cheap condos! I know that the city already has some condos in the suburbs, but they should be made along the transport routes near a reasonable commute distance to the city centre with the public transports, like max 20min.
To be clear they should be built in a belt comparable to the distance of Deer Park and Davisville from Yorkville. These two areas already show some of these developments, but Toronto is booming, you are saying that the prices are high so a lot more condos should be built to improve the offer and cut the prices.
These condos should be modern, not commieblocks. Expensive condos inside the city centre will be reserved to reach people.
An higher density near the city core will make the centre enlarge.

Toronto has a lot of 'cheap' condos, they are just really small Unfortunately we really don't have that many transit lines. Just take a look at the subway map. There are already endless developments all along all of the current subway corridors. The GO train stations meanwhile are purely for drivers. They are usually in isolated, hard to get to areas, and have huge parking lots surrounding them.

That said, the newest plans call for huge intensification of these corridors. Vaughan and Richmond Hill are considering a massive development around Highway 7 and Yonge around the GO station there. Meanwhile, the new subway extension to Vaughan is centred around a HUGE area which will be all high density developments. As well, Markham is building Downtown Markham around a GO station. All in all, in 25 years Toronto will have massive intensification around areas of transit.

The problem with Toronto is that we lack the political will to build even more transit. More or less we're just maxing out what we've already got. As well, because houses dominate most of the landscape, you'd have to evict a LOT of people to completely recreate them into high density neighbourhoods. And as houses within the city get ever more expensive, it will be increasingly impossible get rid of these houses as they will be too expensive to buy up, and filled with too many rich and powerful people to expropriate.

I drive, and I assure you that a good public transport system is the best option if you have to go to work/university and then come back home."Good" means that it is extensive, proportioned to the traffic, not expensive and frequent. Something that you have to go to some european metropolis(or maybe tokyo) to understand.

I have been all around Europe multiple times, to Tokyo 4 times and I'm from Hong Kong. I assure you, I know what 'good' transit looks like and I do enjoy taking it. That said, even in Hong Kong, outside of the middle of rush hour, it is still vastly faster to drive (or take a taxi) than to take transit. Remember, it isn't just the journey of the actual train or bus. It's also the getting to the station, getting from the station to your ultimate destination, waiting for the train/bus to arrive, and switching between transit lines that takes up a lot of time. It involves a lot of walking, a lot of being squished with lots of people, and a lot of standing around. It's much, much easier and nicer to be sitting in a comfortable car even if the car takes marginally more time overall.

And that's in a place with amazing transit. In Toronto where only certain areas of the city have good access to high capacity transit, most people have nothing. And without spending billions of dollars, we will get nothing, but there is no political will to do this.

Overall, I completely agree with you that Toronto would be way more awesome if we were medium density as far as the eye could see with high density at the core. It would be a much more vibrant, exciting, and pedestrian friendly city. I absolutely think that it would be great if things were like that. I just don't think it will be possible, not in the next 25 years. And even if people generally pushed hard for it, there would still be huge hurdles (already built houses, the billions it takes to build new transit, the fact that huge condos with nothing at the bases in places like Mississauga aren't going to be replaced for another 100 years) to any change.

[AndrewJM3D]

Originally Posted by lezgotolondon

If the average price of a suburban house is that, I can't believe that the vast majority of houses are owned and not rented.
I mean, most of the people seems to leave in single houses, but they are expensive to buy(as in Italy in some small cities, but we have very high prices compared to the rest of eu and our salaries are sensibly lower) so where young adults between 20-30 live?Can they afford to buy an house after few working years?are they living with parents?

It's normal that flat and houses in the city centre are expensive, as should be with suburbs. the problem with american cities is that they usually lack a medium density residential belt outside the centre and before the suburbs.
With that belt people could live near the city centre at lower prices because offer will be sensibly larger.

This doesn't seem to happen to Toronto at the moment, isn't it?

I know that american cities are built for cars, but these new developments could partially change the situation. Suburbs will still be for cars, but new medium density residential neighbornhoods will be served by an efficient public transport system, reducing the need for cars.
If you work in one place only far away from home why not using public transport system(if it's a well managed service of course)? you can drive to the nearest station/stop for few minutes and then use the system.
if you need 1.5 hours to go from missisauga to downtown by car is awfully too much, it's 22km in straight line. In london during morning rush hour I never had to wait more than one hour from outside london to the city centre and London is the biggest european city with the biggest suburbs.
if you don't have to drive per dozens of km to go to work, then the traffic will decrease a lot. you can still drive whenever you want.

Summarizing:



Suburbs will still be alive, there will be less demand for houses and probably the prices will go down.
They will become densier and be able to attract shops, jobs and activities because they will be important nodes of the public transpost system, but that will help to decongestionate the traffic towards the city centre, they will become satellites with their own gravity.

Now i'd like to talk about Mississauga:


The municipality counts 700.000 people, as a regular city, but it doesn't look like one at all. This is a problem, every metropolis should have urban satellites.
Toronto is building these satellites now. Missisauga without a city centre could have been part of the Toronto municipality, because there is no point of having one if there are only houses and malls.

The problem is that imho the new centre of Missisauga is badly planned.(but of course you know better than me the situation so maybe explain)
The centre is build for cars ONLY, while it should have been built for pedestrian and cars. A core of few roads where the cars are not allowd surrounded by other building and a lot of multi floor and underground parkings. The shop should have been street shops. Instead we have a big mall just in the middle of the city centre wasting a lot of space.
The city centre is not next to important roads, but they are inside it. Imagine what the city centre of Toronto would look like if it was planned like that! Most boring city ever!
City centres are place of meetings, where the society develops. This is not happening in TO and they looks like nameless suburbs.
I can't imagine there are people willing to pay a lot of money to live in the Abolute world towers!It's a dubai style development.

Will the situation be different in the future? I hope so!

I agree, yes Mississauga has highrises but for the most part it's a sprawling wasteland with no real urban planning. All of the new high density builds are on a grid designed for big box malls. It's one of Toronto's worst boroughs. It's the only one I can think of where the new urban area is built around a mall as the urban centre. That image of Absolute just goes to show how bad it is at street level. Beautiful towers in a suburban wasteland. Most people outside of Mississauga will never see them on foot. Possibly most Missassaugans as well.

[KamT]

Originally Posted by AndrewJM3D

It's one of Toronto's worst boroughs. It's the only one I can think of where the new urban area is built around a mall as the urban centre. That image of Absolute just goes to show how bad it is at street level. Beautiful towers in a suburban wasteland. Most people outside of Mississauga will never see them on foot. Possibly most Missassaugans as well.

Do you people not read the thread, or are you just trying to look like you have no clue what your talking about? I just submitted a post that took me 20 mins to explain..and now your telling me that it's one of the worst boroughs.... #Losingfaithinhumanity

[SparksTO]

Hello guys. I'm going to start College next year in Toronto and I need to find a cheap bachelor apartment to rent, for me it would be easier if I can find some in the Downtown, for study and work.

Do you know good rental pages to look? I really was looking for some but I didn't find any good. And what recommendations can you give me at the time to call someone for the rent?

I really appreciate any help. Thanks.

[lezgotolondon]

Originally Posted by Epi

Toronto has a lot of 'cheap' condos, they are just really small Unfortunately we really don't have that many transit lines. Just take a look at the subway map. There are already endless developments all along all of the current subway corridors. The GO train stations meanwhile are purely for drivers. They are usually in isolated, hard to get to areas, and have huge parking lots surrounding them.

That said, the newest plans call for huge intensification of these corridors. Vaughan and Richmond Hill are considering a massive development around Highway 7 and Yonge around the GO station there. Meanwhile, the new subway extension to Vaughan is centred around a HUGE area which will be all high density developments. As well, Markham is building Downtown Markham around a GO station. All in all, in 25 years Toronto will have massive intensification around areas of transit.

The problem with Toronto is that we lack the political will to build even more transit. More or less we're just maxing out what we've already got. As well, because houses dominate most of the landscape, you'd have to evict a LOT of people to completely recreate them into high density neighbourhoods. And as houses within the city get ever more expensive, it will be increasingly impossible get rid of these houses as they will be too expensive to buy up, and filled with too many rich and powerful people to expropriate.



I have been all around Europe multiple times, to Tokyo 4 times and I'm from Hong Kong. I assure you, I know what 'good' transit looks like and I do enjoy taking it. That said, even in Hong Kong, outside of the middle of rush hour, it is still vastly faster to drive (or take a taxi) than to take transit. Remember, it isn't just the journey of the actual train or bus. It's also the getting to the station, getting from the station to your ultimate destination, waiting for the train/bus to arrive, and switching between transit lines that takes up a lot of time. It involves a lot of walking, a lot of being squished with lots of people, and a lot of standing around. It's much, much easier and nicer to be sitting in a comfortable car even if the car takes marginally more time overall.

And that's in a place with amazing transit. In Toronto where only certain areas of the city have good access to high capacity transit, most people have nothing. And without spending billions of dollars, we will get nothing, but there is no political will to do this.

Overall, I completely agree with you that Toronto would be way more awesome if we were medium density as far as the eye could see with high density at the core. It would be a much more vibrant, exciting, and pedestrian friendly city. I absolutely think that it would be great if things were like that. I just don't think it will be possible, not in the next 25 years. And even if people generally pushed hard for it, there would still be huge hurdles (already built houses, the billions it takes to build new transit, the fact that huge condos with nothing at the bases in places like Mississauga aren't going to be replaced for another 100 years) to any change.

This is why there is need for a good and modern public housing plan near the city centre(not like st. james town).

The new condos seems to be very expensive, despite the fact that the offer is growing fast.
I suppose the demand for apartments near the city centre is big, and probably will be a lot bigger if there were good apartments at as reasonable prices.

The authorities should invest money on that. I don't know if that could be profitable but I think there is a market for both high income condos and middle class housing.

Whatever they do the population in the metro area and in downtown is rising, so they should invest in services and transports.
If they won't do that, dowtown could become a residential nightmare(traffic, lack of services) when thousands of people will buy or rent one of the new properties. The prices could drop and then I don't know what could happen.

They should invest in a smart growth:
1) Build a new medium density residential complex with community in mind.
2) sell and rent apartments, offices and commercial venues. Earn money
3) extend and/or improve the public transport system that is serving the new neighbornhood
4) Make and transport system profitable and earn other money.
5) Repeat until there is demand and the algorithm is profitable.

I can't understand why in the '60-'70 the world saw the construction of a lot of subways in the western countries and now they are to expensive and takes ages to complete.
But Toronto is a lucky city, Canada economy is not as bad as their neghbors or the euro cousins, and the city is growing really fast so I suppose that the mayor should be able to have more money to spend than other cities.

You should start working on the suburbs centres-downtown integration. People who comes from the suburbs should use public transport system, because is better and cheaper. Do you have public parkings?Charge more if they are the majority in downtown.

Go rail should become a good service and the bus system should be improved and connect low density suburbs to the subway, serving well the downtown suburbs.

Then improve the street car system you have and build a subway where is needed.

I don't know why is not possible, I know that the mayor doesn't like trams and subways(when there will be the next elections?2014?), but politicians will have to do something when traffic will be a problem.

What about a good tram system instead of a subway?
In italy whe usually waste a lot of money when we build public services, most of them because of corruption and bad management and a lot because of archelogical discoveries.
7,4 km of the Florence Tranmway line cost 226 millions of € (with HUGE development problems) but it's working well and the entire route takes 23 minutes passing really trafficated roads, in some cases with underpasses. 13,2 km of the Turin Light Subway cost 1048 millions of €.
I think you can do better.

If the prices oh apartments are rising so fast as I've read, it is a BIG problem and the only thing to do is build public housing, we are not is the '70s and better housing can be built.

In Italy we have the same problems, despite having bigger city centres and ,in the medium sized cities, better transports. City apartments costs a lot and in some cases they are even old '70s buildings. The demand is high. No public housing since the bad one of the '70s and in most cases the municipalities are limited by its old boundaries(imagine old toronto medium density in all the confinant municipalities.)


Driving/walking:
it depends where you have to walk. If it's a dead street or not. I will hate to walk for example in the current dowtown missisauga, whil I probably wouldn't complain to walk the same distance in downtown toronto. It's not the same for everyone and I don't know Hong Kong. But usually most people travel during rush hours where a public transport system should be preferable.

[Epi]

Originally Posted by lezgotolondon

This is why there is need for a good and modern public housing plan near the city centre(not like st. james town).

There is. It's called Regent Park. They're spending billions and many years completely redeveloping an old public housing area into a nice new modern public housing with mixed use buildings along with market price condos. So far it has been a huge success.

Unfortunately, there is only so much the city can do. These projects are expensive and extremely complex. If the government took on too many at once, they are liable to just repeat the same plan over and over without context and create huge mistakes.

There are a few more huge public housing areas that certainly will be redone over the next few decades, but it will take a lot of time, money and planning for this to come to fruition.

As well, perhaps public housing where you are from is different from here. Here, public housing is basically government subsidized housing for the poor. That's what it's made for, and that's what it's viewed as by everyone. The poor usually means new immigrants (from poor countries, refugees and so on), the elderly who don't have savings, and those with significant health or mental health issues that prevent them from having a good paying job.

I don't think we have the money to be building public housing for the middle class, nor would I think the middle class would even WANT to live in such places. Unlike say Hong Kong where civil servants get public housing, and public housing is necessary for even the middle class because real estate is completely out of reach for a lot of people, Toronto is still relatively affordable if you are willing to live in a smaller place, in a more dangerous or run down neighbourhood or willing to drive 1 hour to get t work.

Believe or not, most people actually like living in single detached houses here even if the people who post on this forum such as myself like the city.

Meanwhile the market has been endlessly developing new high density housing stock for the middle class people who actually want to live in the city. Toronto has the highest skyscraper construction rate in North America. I don't know about mid-rise construction rates, but we have plenty of that as well. I mean I guess we could always build even MORE and be Dubai, but that probably would be more than the market could bear and the whole thing will crash.

That said, there are a few districts in Toronto marked for medium density development right beside the core. Centred around the waterfront, please check out the Waterfront Toronto thread on this forum. There will be housing, work places and good transit for >100,000 new residents for downtown, one of the largest urban brownfield redevelopment projects in the world.

And as I said, the suburbs, are all developing massively. >100,000 people may live in at the end of the Vaughan extension of the subway line in what is now factories and open fields. >100,000 people will live on Yonge St north of Steeles up to Highway 7 whether or not the subway gets extended north in redeveloped medium and high density buildings. And >25,000 will live in the Downtown Markham medium density development.

Meanwhile from KamT's post above Mississauga is perusing a similar plan as well.

As for Toronto proper, if you look carefully at it, the only easily develop-able land is the waterfront west (already heavily developed over the last 20 years), Liberty Village (already heavily developed by high and medium density buildings), and waterfront east which I mentioned above. Beyond that there are a few areas long the major arterial roads that could be intensified more, and a few somewhat more isolated areas with not so great transit or traffic connections (All along Dufferin and Bathurst, and south of Leslieville). Beyond that you literally have to be evicting people from their single detached houses to build higher density, and when these houses are increasingly going for $1 million each, that's going to be harder and harder to do anywhere near the core of the city. Either way, there's little point redeveloping these areas until current areas are built out and you can only build so much at once unless you live in Dubai or China.

You should start working on the suburbs centres-downtown integration. People who comes from the suburbs should use public transport system, because is better and cheaper. Do you have public parkings?Charge more if they are the majority in downtown.

Go rail should become a good service and the bus system should be improved and connect low density suburbs to the subway, serving well the downtown suburbs.

Then improve the street car system you have and build a subway where is needed.

Again I think you are preaching to the choir here. On these forums, I think people would generally agree with these things. The problem is political will and money.

We had a perfectly good LRT plan in place 2 years ago which was FULLY FUNDED before our new mayor ripped up the plans. Meanwhile for whatever reason, it's going to take 25+ years to upgrade GO to anything better than it is now because it needs to be electrified first, and GO doesn't own their own rail corridors.

As well, the only 2 cities in the entire world where transit actually makes a profit are Tokyo and Hong Kong. We obviously do not have that kind of density in Toronto. The TTC already has one of the lowest government subsidies of any transit system in the world (~20% compared to say ~50% subsidies in Europe), and taxpayers are simply unwilling to ever pay more.

Without more money, we cannot expand service. Without more service, we cannot increase transit modal share beyond ~25%. Without more people using transit, we can't convince more people to pay more taxes for transit. It's a chicken and egg problem. And when the other 75% have invested significant money to buy and maintain cars, they aren't going to give them up so easily to pay for transit projects that they may never personally see any benefit from, at least not for 20 years.

[lezgotolondon]

Thanks for the reply.
Where can I see the project of Regent Park? how many people will it host?

Yes even here public housing is government housing for the poor, but when the prices become very high, from an housing point of view, some middle class is poor.(our regional government is wasting money paying rents to young families instead of buying cheap condos for example and we have really high prices compared to the medium income)

I don't think there is need to build ugly commieblocks for a public housing. Yesterday I searched some prices for apartments in GTA, and they are freaking high.
I don't know what's the average income , and the avg income for young people in Toronto, but I have seen bachelor apartments from 800$/month one bedroom form 1000+$ far away from the city centre and sometimes even from subway and streetcar lines.(and you have to pay the parking lot!)

In Italy, in one of the most expensive cities(even if it's small) I payed 1200€ month for a 2 bedroom+large living room apartment, and I need to walk 10 minutes to reach the city centre. The same in UK(Bristol, it has a sprawl comparable to mississauga) the prices were a bit higher, but the average income was too.

I'm happy to see that Toronto is doing very well and the development plans seems very smart and unbelievable compared to other US cities.

The only my concerns left are the Public transport, but I hope the next major will take care of it, and the house prices, but I don't know how your wages are.

[icemachine]

Toronto's also has a big problem when even medium sized (ie 6-8 story) developments on major streets are blocked by NIMBYism - they don't want apartment/condos to be built in "their" neighborhood, even though it has been identified in the Official Plan as areas slated for intensification.

[isaidso]

Originally Posted by lezgotolondon

Thanks for the reply.
Where can I see the project of Regent Park? how many people will it host?

There's a thread for Regents Park: http://www.skyscrapercity.com/showthread.php?t=168184

[Epi]

Originally Posted by lezgotolondon

I don't think there is need to build ugly commieblocks for a public housing. Yesterday I searched some prices for apartments in GTA, and they are freaking high.

Actually new public housing in Toronto is pretty nice. It's true we have a lot of commie blocks from the 60s though, enough so that the first time I travelled to (east) Berlin I thought 'hey this place looks like Toronto!'.

http://www.torontohousing.ca/investi...nd_street_east

That's an example of a really cool new public housing project.

In Italy, in one of the most expensive cities(even if it's small) I payed 1200€ month for a 2 bedroom+large living room apartment, and I need to walk 10 minutes to reach the city centre. The same in UK(Bristol, it has a sprawl comparable to mississauga) the prices were a bit higher, but the average income was too.

To be fair, the greater Toronto area has over 6 million people living in it, which means that if it were in Europe it would be 3rd largest city behind Paris and London (and Moscow if you count that as Europe). Canada has a higher GDP per capita in both absolute and PPP compared to all of the large European countries. Toronto being the centre of Canada's banking sector, and hosting most of the HQs of Canadian companies, also has a disproportionate share of the wealth of the country. So of course our housing is going to be more expensive, because people here probably on average have more money.

That said, we have a bit of a bubble in our real estate as well. Unlike the USA we never had a real estate crash, so our prices have held up and are now considered actually unaffordable so we are all anxiously awaiting a mild correction in the market.

[Taller, Better]

Originally Posted by lezgotolondon

In Italy, in one of the most expensive cities(even if it's small) I payed 1200€ month for a 2 bedroom+large living room apartment, and I need to walk 10 minutes to reach the city centre. The same in UK(Bristol, it has a sprawl comparable to mississauga) the prices were a bit higher, but the average income was too.

1200€ is nearly $1500 Cdn. I am not in assisted housing, yet I pay less than that for a large downtown 2 bedroom apartment with dining room, living room, kitchen with all appliances and large balcony. When people compare European rental costs to North American, they usually forget that here, electricity (or gas), heating and water costs are normally included in the basic rent, which is very unlikely in the UK or Italy. Tack that monthly cost on top of the basic rent and I imagine it suddenly becomes a lot more $$$$$$$. Of course there are much more expensive new places here if you want, and probably less expensive places, too, but I think you may be overestimating the cost of renting in Toronto.

Originally Posted by Epi

Actually new public housing in Toronto is pretty nice. It's true we have a lot of commie blocks from the 60s though, enough so that the first time I travelled to (east) Berlin I thought 'hey this place looks like Toronto!'.

I think that is the case for all of Europe. There are a heck of a lot of ugly commie blocks there, too, same as any other city in the world that expanded in the 1960's. Those apartment buildings were based on post WW2 concepts by architects/planners like Le Corbusier as a solution to quickly and efficiently house the masses. "Council Flats" in the UK are rarely attractive.

[lezgotolondon]

Toronto is comparable to the size of Milan, a bit bigger than frankfurt,madrid,barcelona.
Anyway the 1200€ were all inclusive and services are not so expensive.

Can you link me a good website where to find good cheap aprtments near downtown?

Berlina was partially under the commies i think this is why it has a lot of commieblocks, but you can find them anywhere in europe especially in spain and in some french banlieu.

The model has luckily changed(except for some developing countries), but unfortunately i can't see a lot of examples of that anywhere in the world.

[Taller, Better]

Originally Posted by lezgotolondon

Toronto is comparable to the size of Milan, a bit bigger than frankfurt,madrid,barcelona.
Anyway the 1200€ were all inclusive and services are not so expensive.

The GTA is almost 6 million people.
Your rent in Italy and the UK included unlimited electricity, heating, gas and water? I am surprised at that. In any case 1200 euros ($1500 Cdn) even in 2012 would not be any particular bargain in Toronto for a modest non-luxury apartment. Here, brand new buildings cost more to live in than older ones, like from the '60's and often the new units are smaller.

London has loads of areas with really appalling public housing; it is definitely not something specific to Toronto or North America.

A bit of googling will bring up apartment rental websites for Toronto, or you can check out individual large landlord websites like Greenwin, etc...

[hkskyline]

How much are the 1-bedrooms in Cityplace going for these days anyway (rent or buy)?

[AndrewJM3D]

Originally Posted by KamT

Do you people not read the thread, or are you just trying to look like you have no clue what your talking about? I just submitted a post that took me 20 mins to explain..and now your telling me that it's one of the worst boroughs.... #Losingfaithinhumanity

Sorry, I didn't realize you invested so much time to create this amazing thread. 20 mins you will never get back. With that being said I still stand by Mississauga being one of the worst suburbs in the GTA. I'm not telling you anything I was merely stating my opinion.

I've never seen somebody get so bent out of shape so quickly on this site, whats even funnier about it is I was agreeing with you.

[Taller, Better]

No idea; Tuscani would likely know as he lives there. I think the cheapest one bedrooms will be in the older blocks built in the 50's-70's. People who must live in a brand new building generally are prepared to pay more.

[KamT]

Originally Posted by AndrewJM3D

Sorry, I didn't realize you invested so much time to create this amazing thread. 20 mins you will never get back. With that being said I still stand by Mississauga being one of the worst suburbs in the GTA. I'm not telling you anything I was merely stating my opinion.

I've never seen somebody get so bent out of shape so quickly on this site, whats even funnier about it is I was agreeing with you.

First of all, I didn't create this thread. I was talking about my comment.

Secondly, how can I not get "bent out of shape" when someone just types a ridiculous comment like you did, right after I explained something so straight forward.

Third of all, are you serious or just trolling...explain to me how you were agreeing with me.. I really don't know where you got that from.

I don't care if you take away 20 mins from me, or even an hour, just make it an hour worth talking about. That's what this forum is all about.
The reason I'm in such shock is because either you didn't read the post I wrote, or you're just trolling. It's hilarious. and here you are making me look like a retard by saying im overreacting... oh man.

[AndrewJM3D]

Originally Posted by KamT

First of all, I didn't create this thread. I was talking about my comment.

Secondly, how can I not get "bent out of shape" when someone just types a ridiculous comment like you did, right after I explained something so straight forward.

Third of all, are you serious or just trolling...explain to me how you were agreeing with me.. I really don't know where you got that from.

I don't care if you take away 20 mins from me, or even an hour, just make it an hour worth talking about. That's what this forum is all about.
The reason I'm in such shock is because either you didn't read the post I wrote, or you're just trolling. It's hilarious. and here you are making me look like a retard by saying im overreacting... oh man.

Sorry I was commenting on the thread, I actually never saw or read your long winded post. I mistook you for the original poster.

So to answer your question no I'm not trolling you because I actually rarely bother to read your posts. It's tough to troll somebody that's only been here for just over 70 posts.

I think this is a better image for you then the one you posted.

[KamT]

Lol yeah I was just confused, cause that was really the only way you could have misunderstand me-not read the comment.

I've actually been reading SSC/SSP/UT for the past 2 years, just didn't make an account till around last year.. + I didn't post regularly until a a couple weeks ago, I had around 40 posts just a month ago, now almost 90 (no clue why you wrote just over 70)..

Anyway, we all start somewhere don't we?

[Taller, Better]

Well, here is a start: WELCOME TO THE GROUP!!

You've had your first fight, and that is the rite of initiation!