Collinsville

Collinsville is a town of about 26,000 about 15 minutes east of St. Louis. It is considered to be a suburb of St. Louis and part of the IL metro area. It is one of the only places in the nation where you can find every stereotype in the same town. There are rich snobs, country clubs, complete ghetto, trailer parks, projects, white-collar neighborhoods, blue-collar neighborhoods, farmers, and rednecks. In high school, the diverse atmosphere leads to groups forming and regularly engaging in "Gangs of New York" style fighting. You find similar people to yourself, get as drunk as possible, and meet in a field for a huge public melee. These fights were usually recorded and then played during class the next day for the entertainment of students and teachers alike. One thing they all have in common is that everyone begins drinking by the eighth grade at the latest. Most are well into the late stages of alcoholism before graduation from high school. This carries on into adulthood where that annual Italian Fest celebration floods mainstreet with massive amounts of drinking and public urination. What used to be one of the most competitive sports high schools in the nation has become one of the worst. This is due to a lack of motivation from male athletes stemming from the girls preferring to sleep with drug addicts. This leads to built up frusttration and thus, more drunken fighting. Sometimes people chill out and go on back road trips or "BRT's" where they cruise country roads and smoke lots of pot. There is a large Wigger population. Some grow out of it, the rest go to jail. Other than all that it's a pretty sweet place to live. We keep it real. Oh yeah, and there's some ancient Indian Burial Mounds and the worlds largest Catsup Bottle.