I’ve been on Hanson’s Street Team for more than a year, and this week, I finally did my first real work for it! I don’t even know if I should call it work, because it was just downright fun! When I lived in Maine, there was basically nothing the ST was asked to do, and it was highly disorganized. Not long after I moved to Maryland, I met the MD ST Leader at a show and quickly made friends with her. (Shout out to Erin!) It had been way too long since I’d seen her, so on Thursday we arranged to do some promoting for the show in Falls Church, VA.
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Erin picked me up on Thursday at 1:00 (not 2:00!!). After some mild drama with how I was going to get to the gate to get her on base, we were on our way to VA to hang up fliers and walk around the awesome town of Falls Church. We started off by going to the venue (Erin’s idea) to see if they had any fliers. Oh boy, did they! The venue (The State Theater) actually printed up their own very nice postcard-sized advertisements for the show! We gave a few of our ST fliers to the nice girl at the box office, and she gave us a bunch of theirs to pass around. Then we just started walking and stopping in stores to hang up fliers. We were not only able to hang up quite a few posters, but also plan out meals for about seven days’ worth of camping in Falls Church. HAH! There are a lot of really yummy-looking restaurants in that city, though! We hung up fliers in two especially cool places: one called the CD Cellar and one called Let’s Play Music. The former was a used CD store in a very cool space in a tiny strip mall. We even browsed their selection a bit and I was very impressed, though saddened at the lack of any 
Hanson whatsoever. The latter was a music lesson space with a very cool owner. He told us that at one point, he almost recorded in the same studio as Hanson at roughly the same time. The guys ended up recording somewhere else close by, he said. He seemed very impressed by them, and he might even come to the show! (By the way, their logo has the cutest guitar-playing cartoon man I’ve ever seen, and he slightly reminds me of Isaac, haha!)
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Today, I was able to participate in a car wash to raise money for HIVSA and other causes that Hanson supports through their website, takethewalk.net. The event was organized by Jaime, one of the MD ST girls. I’d met her at the Falls Church show last spring, but sure didn’t remember until I saw her today! I left my house at 7:45 and got to Erin’s by about 8:30. She drove us up to Perry Hall, which is about 30 minutes northeast of Baltimore. We helped set up for the car wash/bake sale with Jaime and two other girls (Crystal and Angela). It was ridiculously hot outside, and we were pretty excited to do some car washing! Unfortunately I think more 
people came through the parking lot trying to get Chick-fil-A food on a Sunday than came for the car wash, but we still managed to wash probably 15 cars. We made quite a bit of money for the different causes, thanks to lots of promo on Jaime’s part! I’ve never done a car wash like that before, and it was a blast to be able to do something so simple that will help so much. I might even see what I can do about hosting a car wash here on base. The Chief Selects do them all the time in the huge parking lot by the gas station/base theater/Home Traditions store, and it’s close to the road so there’s plenty of exposure. Who knows?
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I’m completely excited about being a part of a Street Team that actually does things to promote the band, their shows, and the causes they’re involved in! GO GO MD ST!
