Every time I travel out of state and tell people I’m from Belleville, a sprawling yet unexpectedly quiet town in Southern Illinois, nine times out of ten they ask about how close Chicago is, how cool it must be living so close to Chicago, or that they’ve never heard of it. Little do they know that there’s actually a sizable chunk of Illinois that’s actually not near Chicago at all and best friends with St. Louis, Missouri. I don’t have the heart to tell them that sometimes. So I wrote it out here instead, and along with a list of other issues unique to this strange little area I call home, I hope to convince a few non-Illinoisans that we’re here and (mostly) proud of it.

“Having to Answer ‘You’re from the St. Louis area? Isn’t that in Missouri?’”

Well technically the city is in Missouri, but the metro area and a lot of the suburbs go waaay beyond that, and some of them spill over into Illinois. We’re die-hard Cardinals fans, we have an unhealthy obsession with good barbeque, and Budweiser flows like water here.

“Pick a season, any season, and stick with it. That’s all we want.”

The day before I wrote this, it was 65 degrees outside and I drove with top down all day. The very next day, it snows. I can’t deal. Metro-east weather is unpredictable to say the least, going from swampy to icy and back again in the span of a week. Everybody here dresses in layers, and we trust weather apps about as far as we can throw the huge green clock downtown.

“The Offsets is (was) a rite of passage.”

A little bit of a drive, but for most kids growing up in Belleville and the Metro-east, this was the ultimate test of bravery. Cliff-jumping in the Midwest is hard to come by, so this spot was the go-to for everybody looking for adventure – at least until they made it so that you have to be 21+ to jump recently. But hey, fakes are still a thing, right?

“Did you go to East or West?”

When meeting someone for the first time in Belleville, the unofficial capital of the Metro-east, one of the first things they’ll ask you is which public high school you went to (sorry, nobody cares about Althoff.) There are two major ones, Belleville East and Belleville West, each with incredibly different student populations. The football rivalry is fierce and without a doubt the most interesting thing that goes on there.

“Oktoberfest Starts in September.”

Because of the huge German population (actually old guys who like to pretend they’re German), Belleville takes Oktoberfest very, very seriously. And because for some reason people don’t know how months work, it actually starts in the middle of September every year. Downtown turns into a concert venue, and anybody who’s anybody shows up and has a good time.

“You know that ‘squares’ are actually circles.”

Typically when you think of a town square, you might imagine something that looks like a huge quad with grassy patches or nice benches where people can talk and hang out. In Belleville, however, the square is basically a huge circle. Most parades, holidays, and near-accidents happen here as no one seems to know how to move through it. I was born there and I still don’t.