We Were Here
Hilde Hasvold and Julie Fuertes
“Some people think it’s weird,” says Hilde. “I have pictures all over my house. I spend money I don’t have to go on trips. People don’t get it. ‘You did it once, so you don’t have to go again.’”
Hilde Hasvold, 44, lives in Chicago, a single woman who doesn’t let anyone judge her. She loves what she loves—and she’ll tell you that’s the New Kids on the Block (or NKOTB for the more modern audience). But, really, it’s more than that.
“I’ve met my people. At these concerts and trips, I’m with thousands of other people like me, who go out of their way to be part of this band. Deep inside, it’s been in you for so long, there is no way you’re going to give it up now for anybody,” says Hilde.
Her people are the Block Heads, the affectionate nickname of lovers of the boy band that hit it big in the late 1980s with “Hangin’ Tough,” “Please Don’t Go Girl,” “I’ll Be Loving You” and “You Got It (The Right Stuff),” to name just a few.
A Not-So-Private Club
Being a Block Head is like being a member of a private club with its own language, dress code and sensibilities. I experienced this at the 2019 Mixed Tape tour in Milwaukee. Angie, a Block Head herself, had an extra ticket to the show that featured Tiffany, Debbie Gibson, Salt-N-Pepa, Naughty by Nature and headliner NKOTB.
I’ll admit, I raised an eyebrow at a few of the outfits, or costumes, middle-aged women wore with childlike pride and the raw, unfiltered emotion these fans displayed when the boys hit the stage.
In my childhood memories, Donnie Wahlberg, Danny Wood, Jonathan Knight, Joe McIntyre and Jordan Knight (whose face I wore on an oversized button pinned to my fluorescent jacket) effortlessly blend sweet, harmonic ballads that tug at tween heart strings and contagious pop tunes that caused us to break out in dance moves we mimicked from MTV videos. (Oh, oh, ohoh-oh.)
Thirty years later, these “boys” offered us chest-baring, hip-grinding dance moves and more-than-suggestive lyrics clearly upgraded for their now, more mature fans. I obviously came in judgmental … I left with a new perspective.
This private club wasn’t private at all. It was warm, welcoming and, to my chagrin, non-judgmental. The mostly female fan base came together like old friends, even if they just met that night. They had a familiar bond.
Angie taking a selfie shot of us at the Milwaukee Mixed Tape tour. That’s me, Kari, your storyteller, on far left, and our friends Angie (yes, another one) and Candace.
Psychology of a Fan
Hilde met one of her people in Boston, the epicenter of NKOTB fandom. It’s the town where the boys famously grew up and where everyone has a tale of “knowing them when.”
Growing up in Chicago, Hilde remembers reading a meet-the-band article in a Bop or Tiger Beat teen magazine when she was in 7th grade, her young brain thinking how odd it was that all their names started with a J or a D. The next thing she remembers is hearing “Please, Don’t Go Girl” on the radio — and, shortly after, New Kids fever exploded.
“I remember sitting there with my VHS trying to record every song that came on MTV,” said Hilde, also scrounging up a memory of the band dancing at a bowling alley on Nickelodeon, little memory clips lodged in her psyche. And the obsession didn’t stop, even years after the group’s heyday.
“They’re just your guys,” she says. “They’re yours.”
And everyone had a favorite (“or they’re not a fan,” according to Angie). Hilde’s was Jordan because of his looks, his voice and those “vampire teeth, oh, my God,” she shrieks over with sincere adoration.
Hilde grew up in Chicago and then found herself in Massachusetts when her father transferred to Boston for his job. She ended up attending Mount Wachusett Community College, where she met Julie Fuertes.
Both in their early 20s, Hilde and Julie signed up for the same psychology course, a night class full of older adults. During an ice breaker, they paired up to interview each other and discovered their shared love of NKOTB.
Hilde (right) and Julie met in college during a “meet your fellow student” ice breaker. Photo courtesy of Julie Fuentes.
The Local Boys
The New Kids on the Block are truly the boys next door. All, except for Joe who lived just 4 miles away, grew up in the blue-collar Boston neighborhood of Dorchester.
Julie, 43, with a husband and daughter, has spent her whole life in the Boston area. In 1989, her cousin Lynn introduced Julie to the music the “local guys” were putting out and took Lynn’s mom, Julie and Julie’s mom to see the band co-headlining with Tiffany that year at the Great Woods Performing Arts Center (now Xfinity Center in Mansfield, Mass.). It was the first of many NKOTB concerts Lynn and Julie would travel to throughout New England.
Despite the girl power, “The best thing about the New Kids on the Block for me was it was a way of bonding with my father,” she explains.
Her father, Bruce, a former truck driver, now 80, didn’t have a lot in common with his daughter. However, Boston was something he knew well, and knowing the members of her favorite band were local Bostonians was an opening.
Julie with her daughter, Madison, and dad, Bruce, with whom she shared a bond over the New Kids on the Block. Photo courtesy of Julie Fuentes.
He took her on a trip to Boston to see the Kids’ childhood homes, the youth collaborative they belonged to and other famous hangouts like Fields Corner. He would bring home the Boston Herald which would publish letters the band sent home during their first European tour.
The band released 5 records, 4 of which went platinum (Hangin’ Tough going 8 times platinum) before they broke hearts with a split in 1994.
“You would spend so much time being in fandom with them, and then they broke up,” says Julie, who favors Donnie. “In my mind, it will be like, okay, someday they will be old and I’ll just bump into them. I still had the hopes of meeting them one day.”
The Day Hilde Died
That day came 23 years later. Over the years, Julie and Hilde went to shows separately, mostly in the cheap seats, after the band reunited in 2008. Then, in 2017, the band booked a concert at Fenway, the historic home of the Green Monster and the Boston Red Sox. The boys were coming home.
“The 13-year-old Hilde died. ... I never, never, ever thought that would happen to me.”
Julie bought a big package: second-row seats and a meet-and-greet. She called Hilde, who had moved back to Chicago and whom Julie hadn’t seen since 2001.
“I said, ‘Hilde, I have these tickets. One of them is yours. You just have to get out here,’” says Julie.
Hilde describes, “I was working in the early, early morning, and I get a text. It said, ‘I have to ask you a really important question.’ I’m like, oh, my God, what’s wrong? She said, ‘I have a ticket to the Fenway Park show, would you want to go?’”
Ah, yes!
A young Hilde once asked a friend, whose family was traveling to Boston, to fill a canning jar full of sand from a Boston beach just in case a NKOTB member had walked on it. Now she was meeting them face to face.
“The 13-year-old Hilde died. I felt her. She was so happy she like dropped dead,” says Hilde. “ I never, never, ever thought that would happen to me. My 13-year-old self was beyond happy and excited, and she kind of took over the adult Hilde and was like keep going, keep going! Do it again, do it again!”
She did. Both women did. More meet and greets and a whole new experience on the water was right around the corner.
Finding Their People
That same year, Julie signed up for an obstacle course race in Lowell, Massachusetts. It was a fundraiser for Remember Betty, a nonprofit that provides financial support to breast cancer patients and survivors. NKOTB Danny Wood started it in memory of his mother who died from the disease in 1999.
As fate would have it, Angie (yes, The Starving Groupie and Danny fan Angie) signed up, too.
Angie helps Julie over an obstacle during a Remember Betty fundraiser where they met.
“I did it myself,” recalls Julie. “None of my friends were doing things like I did. I met Angie and a bunch of her friends from Wisconsin. We helped each other over walls, and at Danny’s party later, I hung out with them. I thought we could be friends.”
It started as Facebook friends, and they began talking about the just announced New Kids on the Block cruise. Soon a foursome chat formed with Angie, Julie, Hilde and Angie’s cousin Heather. Quickly, the tickets to Miami were booked.
The NKOTB cruise is a hands-on experience, one that takes planning and participation. The cruisers decorate the doors to their rooms and dress for each night’s theme. The band performs, holds events and mingles around the cruise ship.
(From left) Angie, Julie, Heather and Hilde on the 2018 New Kids on the Block cruise.
“For me, it’s about just being around them and in that whole environment and the vibe,” says Julie. “They do it to be closer to their fans.”
It’s also a chance for fans to be with their people. The women loved it so much, they signed up again for the 2020 cruise.
“Our first cruise together in 2018 was just to experience it. We all booked this time to hang out together,” says Angie. “I realize it’s an expensive way to hang out.”
They jokingly call themselves the Golden Girls. They even had custom wine glasses engraved with that theme for the cruise.
They were set to sail on April 23, 2020. Then COVID-19 shut down the world. No Roaring ‘20s or MTV ‘90s theme parties, no GPS night to see Hilde’s Chicago hot dog dress and Angie’s Wisconsin cheese bra, and no coveted band member minglings.
Or so they thought.
Fandom From Afar
In true NKOTB fashion, the boys made the cruise happen—virtually. They planned a weekend of Instagram Live’s, streaming meet and greets, and cooking demos. Julie even warned her family she was dressing up and taking over their living room all weekend long: “It’s what makes me happy.”
And that’s what it’s all about, right? Enjoying the music you love, the musicians you love and doing it with others who love it, too.
Hilde and Julie pose in front of their New Kids on the Block cruise ship in 2018.
“I have always loved the song, ‘We Were Here,’” said Hilde because it reminds her of that first time she met the band with Julie in Boston. “It just totally explains our experience we had doing that together for the first time after all these years.”
When the world looks back a
hundred years from now
They’ll hear the echo of our cheers
because we spend our lives making memories
They will know that we were here.
There will be more firsts, seconds and thirds when the concert halls open and the ships depart again. Until then, the Golden Girls reminisce remotely. They’ve found their people.
