If the state of the housing market leaves you wanting to kick, scream and beat things up with a bat, you’re not alone. An Albuquerque, New Mexico, real estate agent and her fiancé are opening a ‘rage room’ that lets people let out steam by smashing things to bits in a small commercial space.
Alexis Hassley
The rage room trend has been taking off all over the country. The concept: you pay to spend time in an empty room filled with appliances, crash test dummies and cheap glassware. Participants are given tools such as sledgehammers and bats of varying weights to let out any pent-up anger by breaking as many things as they possibly can.
As first reported by a local outlet, Home Authority agent Alexis Hassley and her fiancé Rafael Tigay thought up the ‘ABQ Rage Room’ as a way of helping Albuquerque residents let off steam. Their rage room, which will open on Thursday near the local Broadbent Business Park, is conceptually similar to rage rooms across the country but not tied to any franchise.
“We saw it on Law and Order and were like ‘we don’t have one of those here,'” Hassley told Inman. “We thought that we should open one and so we did.”
To make the rage room, Hassley and Tigay lined an office space with plywood and brought in various pipes and crowbars. Visitors can put on protective glasses and coveralls or, if they’re wearing clothes that fully cover their arms and legs, remain in their own clothes. You can select different packages of how many items you want to smash — plates and glasses as well as larger items like old computers and keyboards.
Hassley told Inman that so far the response has been overwhelmingly positive. Many of her real estate colleagues were excited to try it as soon as it opens. She thinks that the reason rage rooms have been seeing such popularity is because it’s rare to have a safe place to throw and smash things to smithereens — something that many people inherently want to do but can’t.
When asked, Hassley said that the trend was driven by people having pent-up anger about many different aspects, including one’s personal life, problems at work or hopelessness over divisive national politics.
“Seeing a plate explode just gives you this rush,” she said. “There are really very few opportunities when you can throw plates and glass and not get arrested. This is one of them.”