Helping out a fellow player in need.

Hey everybody, Nick here. I'm taking a brake with Street Fighter, with something I wanted to talk about. This week there was a huge fire in Chinatown here in New York that is now leaving over 200 people now homeless. One such person effected was Chinatown Fair local, Chris Hu. Chris is a great Street Fighter IV player and he helps provide a lot of hilarious commentary for some tournament gaming streams.

Now why am I reporting it here? It's not really arcade news because CTF isn't near where this happened. But I know full well of what Chris and the other 55 families are now going through. Back in January of 1999 I suffered a house fire due to a raw power surge hitting the transformer in our garage. It overloaded and exploded and there was noting I could do but sit there and watch it burn till the fire department came to put out the flames. While we did loose our home and we had to end up moving due to a lot of issues I won't get into, I was lucky then these people were. We were able to go back into our house to recover our belongings that weren't burned by the fire.

Chris and his family lost everything, including their families savings. As he says in the interview a lot of the people didn't trust putting their money in banks so the savings his grandmother had are all gone. The people over on SRK have set up a fund to help get Chris and his family back on his feet. Mark Man from MadKatz is even donating a brand new SSIV Tournament Stick and the people from SRK have donated $1000 to help out. I will include a link if you would like to help make a donation. I don't have much but I also chipped in some money.

Now while the outpouring of support has been amazing, I am also sickened by the amount of heartless comments that people have been writing. This story was reported on Kotaku and I was really angry reading some of there hate filled posts. Even back when I had my house fire my so called friends and neighbors started spreading lies about us saying we caused the fire. Since I've already gone through this, I will say that I would never wish that even on my own worst enemy. It's something that nobody should ever have to go through and I'm glad that there are some nice people out there that are willing to lend a hand when somebody is down. So if you've got something to spare, please send your well wishes to Chris and his family and the other 50 plus families effected by this fire.

SRK: Help Out a Friend in Need

Thanks for letting me vent. I know this isn't arcade news or even a game review, but after reading about two of those comments I just wanted to say something and get it off my chest. I'll have a review of Street Fighter EX Plus Alpha tomorrow, so thanks again for checking out the site.

Update. On Friday April 16th, there will be a SFIV Tournament at China Town Fair with all the money going towards helping Chris. Please check out this link for more information.

Tournament for Chris starting at 8pm at CTF