Smashing things may not seem at first blush to be a winning idea to wrap a business around. Since March, however, nearly 1,500 people have shown up to break housewares, electronics and furniture at the Wrecking Club, two reinforced rooms in the basement of a building in the garment district of Manhattan.
Many of this number are couples looking for something more piquant than the usual date-night fare, said Tom Daly, the Wrecking Club’s proprietor. But rage is not confined to matrimony and other romantic unions, as Mr. Daly has also found.
“That’s the cool thing about addressing an instinct,” he said on a recent steamy afternoon. “Everyone’s got it.”
The Wrecking Club is not the first rage-based enterprise. Last fall, politics drove the business at the Anger Room, which opened in Dallas in 2008. Clients showed up by the hundreds to batter human effigies of Hillary Clinton and Donald J. Trump. Three Trump mannequins and two Clintons were utterly destroyed, according to the owner, Donna Alexander, and had to be replaced.
There is no such cosseting at the Wrecking Club. The bats and crowbars are solid metal. A starter session costs $30 for 30 minutes with two or three electronic devices and a bucket of dishes. A menu of add-ons — advertised on a white board like daily specials at a restaurant — includes boxes of dishes ($20 for one box; two for $35); laptops ($15); computer monitors ($20); cellphones ($5); and large-screen TVs ($25). The most requested items are laptops, monitors, printers and extra dishes. (Mr. Daly estimates he runs through about 60 to 70 electronic devices each week.)
Finding these materials is one of his biggest challenges. Companies going out of business are an irregular source. Sometimes people donate things, Mr. Daly said, adding that everything smashed at the Wrecking Club is properly recycled.
A year or so ago, Mr. Daly, 29, was bored with his finance job in Stamford, Conn. He quit before it was too late, he said, “to do something really cool.” A cheerful, fresh-faced guy wearing a backward black baseball cap, blue polo shirt and blue linen pants, Mr. Daly has happy memories of demolishing a swing set in his parents’ backyard, at their request, after he and his siblings had left home, and these sparked his imagination. “It was more fun than playing on the swing set,” he said. “The memory stayed with me and that’s what made me think about breaking things.”
The vibe and aesthetic of the Wrecking Club is part CBGB’s basementcirca 1977, part Stasi interrogation room. Each room is clad in pocked cement and plywood for maximum “smash effect,” as Mr. Daly put it. Drywall, he pointed out, wouldn’t be hard enough to break stuff against. Hanging on an entry wall is a still photograph from the cult turn-of-the-millennium movie “Office Space”: the beloved printer-smashing scene. The rooms have been lightly embellished in black and orange spray paint by Derrick Gutierrez, a graffiti artist who is also Mr. Daly’s FedEx delivery guy. “He tagged the place as if it were a bridge,” Mr. Daly said admiringly. “I wanted it to have a Brooklyn-in-the-1990s vibe. I think he crushed it.”
There were some early setbacks, like the time a couple destroyed Mr. Daly’s laptop. He had left it in the room after showing the two a safety video and did not think to tell them it wasn’t part of their package. “All I can say is, ‘Thank God for the Cloud,’” he said, shaking his head. “I didn’t tell the customers what they’d done, because I didn’t want them to feel bad.” But new customers will see that some areas and objects in the rooms are now marked with an X for “Please don’t smash.”
Mr. Daly is keeping the building’s location a secret (after you sign up for a session online, your confirmation email contains the address): not to protect his landlords, but to maintain the atmosphere of a speakeasy.
Close-toed shoes are required, and long pants and long sleeves suggested. Customers who are visibly drunk or stoned will be turned away and their deposit forfeited. Mr. Daly provides safety goggles, hard hats, work gloves and black nylon smocks.
He seemed surprised when this reporter arrived alone. “It’s just more fun with two,” he said. But inviting a new boyfriend to what surely constitutes end-stage relationship behavior did not appeal (I was not eager to fast-track into Martha and George territory). And breaking crockery seemed too intimate an activity to share with even an old friend.
Indeed, there are two things that propel people into the Wrecking Club, Mr. Daly said. “One is to have some fun, and the other is to work something out.”
I ordered a monitor, a large flat-screen TV, a chair and a box of dishes. Mr. Daly said that most customers play music, and I looked to Dina Litovsky, the photographer who had accompanied me to document the proceedings, for assistance. “Metallica, obviously,” she said, and cued up the thrash anthem “Battery” on her phone.
In a corner were a metal bat and a long crowbar. Dina and I were stymied by the heat — the air-conditioning wasn’t working — and our goggles kept fogging up as our eyes stung with sweat. I picked up a bat, approached the TV, and, then, I am ashamed to say, I hit the thing like a girl. Minor crack. James Hetfield of Metallica barked and howled: “Hungry violence seeker, feeding off the weaker.” Really, it was embarrassing. I pined for something more jolly; Blondie’s “Heart of Glass,” say, or that very satisfying Carrie Underwood song in which she crows about demolishing her cheating ex’s car with a bat and a set of keys.
“Most people are hesitant at first,” Mr. Daly said. “They’re a little timid. They say, ‘Can I break that?’ I’m like, ‘Yeah, you can break that.’ Usually after the first hit, they go crazy.”
Here’s what I have to report: Hastening an object toward entropy isn’t as easy as you might think. Televisions are extremely hard to destroy, even with a metal bat. Apple monitors are even more durable. Chairs are impossible. And unlike David Bowie, I don’t like the sound of breaking glass; it makes my teeth hurt. And it’s scary as hell when a mist of tiny shards sprays back at you. The deep reservoir of rage I was hoping to tap turned out to be a dry creek, drained by time — who can remember the hurts of yore? — and self-consciousness. There would be no primal screaming on West 38th Street that hot summer day. Two people breaking things seems festive; a solo smasher is just weird.
I found a bit of a rhythm, finally, with my bat, and systematically worked my way over the TV screen — pop, pop, pop — until the floor sparkled with black glass. I stifled an urge to ask for a dustpan and broom.
Mr. Daly has learned a thing or two about human nature in the last few months.
“From my very humble and limited education, I think that part of what’s going on here is that breaking stuff gives people back their edge,” he said. “It lets people take their power back. Imagine getting fired. It sucks. It’s defeating. Or you got dumped, or you didn’t get into the college you wanted, or imagine whatever it is that makes you feel weak. This is a place where you can get back your power.”