Had enough? Me too! National ‘rage room’ chain coming to NJ
Life can suck. The stress of money, kids, traffic, misunderstandings, health issues, broken hearts, backstabbers, you get the picture. The stuff we never mention when people ask how we’re doing. But it can be a daily knot of stress in your core that if you let out, now you’re the monster.
This was a bit of the idea behind the movie “Fight Club.” Just letting off steam in a violent yet consensual arrangement. But a real-life Fight Club is going to be legally problematic. Which is why the first two rules of Fight Club are that you don’t talk about Fight Club.
What if there were something else? What if you could let out your stress and anxiety and anger not by busting someone’s face but by busting stuff? And what if it were legal?
It is. Have you heard of rage rooms? It’s where you pay to go into a room in a controlled environment and literally break things. Shatter glass. Smash television sets. Do all the things that if you did them at work or at home, you’d have police called on you.
But rage rooms encourage it. They’ve been around a few years now. And a national chain rage room is debuting in New Jersey.
According to an NJ.com report, iSMASH is opening on Route 46 in Woodland Park in Passaic County.
It’s their first location in the Garden State, and if they need stressed-out people for a customer base, you’d have to assume they’ll do incredibly well here.
Yes, they set you up with protective clothing. Yes, they arm you with a baseball bat, a sledgehammer, etc. Yes, they have you sign a waiver.
Then you get to smashing.
Call it therapeutic. Call it something different to do with your friends. Call it whatever you want, but they’re becoming popular the way escape rooms did.
They do birthday parties. Corporate team building experiences. If you have kids too young for the scary smashing, they have paint splatter parties.
No specific opening date for the first iSMASH in Jersey has been announced and their website lists the Woodland Park location as simply “coming soon.”
When they open, wouldn’t it be cool if instead of a ribbon-cutting ceremony, they have a china cabinet-crashing ceremony? Let’s hope.
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