After surviving a full-blown Youngstown blizzard in 2025, Winter Thunderland is back and ready to do it all over again! Join us Saturday, December 12, starting at 3PM at Westside Bowl for a holiday celebration that is a little weird, a little loud, and absolutely not your grandma’s Christmas party.

Winter Thunderland is back with free shopping, local artists, music, drinks, pizza, bowling, an arcade, a record shop, holiday chaos, and of course, Heavy Metal Santa himself (and Krampus!). Whether you’re looking for a genuinely cool gift, need an excuse to get out of the house, or just want to drink a beer and watch Youngstown collectively pretend it isn’t cold outside, we’ve got you covered.

Starting at 3PM, the FREE Artist Market will fill Westside Bowl with local makers, artists, weirdos, and creative people selling the strange, the beautiful, the handmade, and the stuff you definitely won’t find at the mall. Come wander, shop local, soak up the Thunderland decorations, and enjoy everything else Westside Bowl has to offer.

And yes, HEAVY METAL SANTA AND KRAMPUS ARE BACK.

Bring the kids. Bring your friends. Bring your neighbor. Grab a $5 photo with the loudest Santa in the North Pole, or stop by and say hello before Krampus finds out what you’ve been up to. We’ll also have a charity raffle packed with awesome prizes, with this year’s local cause to be announced soon. Every raffle ticket helps support a good cause, right here in the community.

Raffle winners will be drawn at 7:30PM. (You do not have to be present to win, but make sure your information is on your ticket.)

Then things get loud!

At 8PM, we will have the Winter Thunderland concert, featuring a lineup of regional and local bands that we’ll be announcing soon. Admission is just $10, and we’ll be turning up the volume and letting the holiday spirit get a little questionable.

Winter Thunderland is powered by Rusty Waters Apparel, the local t-shirt brand that has been putting the Rust Belt on shirts since 2005 with designs inspired by the grit, history, weirdness, and questionable decision-making of Youngstown, Pittsburgh, and Cleveland.

Once again, Rusty Waters has teamed up with Westside Bowl, the Youngstown west side institution that has been keeping the city’s creative, musical, and slightly chaotic spirit alive since 2018.

We survived the blizzard.

We survived the holidays.

We survived another year in Youngstown.

Now we’re throwing a party.

This isn’t just a holiday market.
This isn’t just a rock show.
It’s Winter Thunderland.

December 12.
Westside Bowl.
Youngstown, Ohio.

Come get weird for Christmas.