Packapalooza™ Rocks Hillsborough Street: A Grand Finale to Welcome Week
An unseasonably (relatively speaking) cool afternoon in Raleigh on Saturday, Aug. 24 was the perfect backdrop for the annual Packapalooza™ street festival and block party. NC State students, faculty, staff, alums and local community members flocked to Hillsborough Street to celebrate the 12th year of the popular festival.
This year, it’s estimated that over 90,000 people attended the event, presented by Live it Up! Hillsborough Street, which featured numerous vendor booths and performers, including The Rescues, with lead singer Kyler England, an NC State graduate, headlining the musical performances.
“With months of planning down to the smallest of details, Packapalooza was a huge success,” said Justine Hollingshead, assistant vice chancellor and leader of the Packapalooza planning team. “Our planning team comprised of staff, student leaders, alumni and community partners spent hours planning, setting up and facilitating one of the largest NC State events in history. It was a PACKtacular NC State day.”
This year’s Packapalooza marked the final edition in Randy Woodson’s tenure as NC State chancellor. Woodson, who considers Packapalooza a favorite event of the year and regularly joins the evening performance on the Memorial Belltower stage, is set to retire at the end of the 2024-25 school year. This year, he joined The Rescues for a guitar solo of the 80’s rock classic, “Hungry Like the Wolf,” made famous by Duran Duran.
The festival also included Improv Everywhere’s “The MP3 Experiment,” allowing festivalgoers to engage in a participatory audio performance experience.
Per tradition, the night ended with fireworks and the lighting of the Memorial Belltower red.
Packapalooza was the grand conclusion of NC State’s 2024 Wolfpack Welcome Week, but participation numbers were also high at other signature events this year, including:
First-Year and Transfer Orientation: 7,300
New Student Convocation: 4,200
Back 2 School Jam REVIBE: 1,000
Student Involvement Fair: 3,000
RecFest: 8,000
Moonlight Howl and Run: 6,000
Talley Takeover: 2,500
Campus Move-in: 10,915
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