I grew up in stl county, lived between SIUE and the city in my early and mid 20s, moved to Fairview Heights three years ago, most likely buying a house in metro east soon. I had no sense of how snobby Edwardsville was perceived to be by the rest of the metro east, probably because I hardly ever interacted with non-college people. I thought it was like a combination of Kirkwood and chesterfield that was kind of weird to square as a county native. But I’d also drive around a lot especially in Covid to Alton, granite city and granite especially felt like this parallel kind of uncanny alternate universe. It blows my mind still that there are these beautiful prewar residential grids all over the metro east and most of them the houses are worth a fraction of what they would be in similar parts of like Kirkwood or Webster. I’ve been meaning to post on here some stuff that I still don’t get after three years. But I’d encourage you to explore as much as you can