Hometown

I'm a little below the word count, so if there is anything I could expand on tell me

Prompt I used: What marketing slogan would you use for your hometown?

"Boring, but safe and athletic" is my hometown in a nutshell. St. Joseph, Illinois isn't all that interesting, and I think the common perception from outside isn't totally accurate. When I've talked about my hometown with my friends at Uni, there are two ideas that are inevitably brought up.

To begin with, a lot of people have no idea where St. Joe is, despite it being less than miles away from Urbana. You'll pass it anytime you hop on I-74 and head east.

But when I tell people it's a town ten miles away, the logical conclusion is that its a rural farm village in the middle of nowhere. This isn't accurate at all in the case of St. Joe, however. While it is a town completely separated from Champaign-Urbana, its more like a suburb than anything else. A very large part of the residents are families with parents that work in the city.

Because of this, for a town of four thousand people, there are basically no job opportunities or businesses. The "downtown" has about ten successful businesses, and until recently, the only non-chain restaurant in the entire village was the El Toro which nearly everyone in the town goes to at least once in a while. Nearly all of the town is composed of relatively new medium sized houses.

Generally, there are two types of residents in St. Joe: couples with kids that go to school in the town or recently graduated, and old folks who have lived in the town their whole lives. St. Joe has been and continues to be a very attractive place to live for young couples, and that's due to a few reasons.

Firstly, St. Joe is very safe- I can't remember a single dangerous crime. The worst crime that's happened in St. Joe in my lifetime (as far as I remember) is a failed robbery that happened literally a decade ago near my house. Three police cars showed up, arrested the guy, and were gone within thirty minutes. Generally, it is very rare to hear even a police siren within the town. In fact, I can't recall hearing one within the past few months.

This safety allows for a lot of freedoms that aren't available in other villages or cities. Because of this, parents will often give their kids a lot of freedom. This was very helpful for me, as I was allowed to go anywhere in town on my bike from the age of ten or so. Kids can hang around and play late at night without any trouble.

Another thing St. Joe is well known for is the athletics. All the way from grade school to high school, sports are the number one priority for many students. St. Joe does have a reputation for being a sports-crazed town, and I would definitely agree with that. For example, in my fifth grade class, well over half of the boys played on the school basketball team. Not only are sports popular, but most of the sports programs have been extremely successful- a boys basketball state championship a couple years back, a 2nd state football finish recently, the softball and baseball teams both going to state last year, multiple cross country state finishes, the list goes on and on. For a small town, its quite successful, and because of that, even more sports-crazed families want to move in. This has even lead to accusations of recruiting- an interesting rumor I heard is that less than one fourth of the high school softball team went to St. Joe in grade school. Quite interesting. 

While St. Joe is on the surface a boring suburb with no attractions and next to no businesses, it is attractive to many because of its safety and support for athletics.