Some of our typical options are baseball bats, golf clubs, two-by-fours.

November 28, 2016 11:15 AM

Since 2011, the Anger Room in Arlington has offered its visitors (ages 18 and up) the ability to pummel, pound, splinter, shred, and straight-up smash the hell out of all kinds of stuff as a way to relieve stress. Similar businesses include the Smash Shack in Jacksonville, NC, a pair of Rage Rooms in Toronto -- North York and downtown -- and Tantrums LLC in Houston, along with the soon-to-be-christened Break Room in St. Paul, MN and Smash Room in La Crosse, WI. It's way more relaxing than yoga.

What may have been the original American smash shack, Sarah's in San Diego, opened in 2008 and closed in 2009. "Relief rooms" have existed in Japan for at least 20 years.

posted by amnesia and magnets (36 comments total)

Sounds like an extreme manifestation of the myth that emotions 'have to be let out'. I'm sure it's fun though, when treated as such.
posted by pipeski at 11:23 AM on November 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

As far as I can find via google, these don't actually work over the long term. Penn and Teller did a Bullshit episode on it also. The sample size is too small, but they talk to the professor who ran one of these experiments.
posted by Hactar at 11:24 AM on November 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

I wish there were one of these in New York City.
posted by SansPoint at 11:27 AM on November 28, 2016

There is. It's called New York City.
posted by jonmc at 11:30 AM on November 28, 2016 [54 favorites]

I find it interesting that so many of these exist in places that my ex-spouse has lived.
posted by Etrigan at 11:30 AM on November 28, 2016 [10 favorites]

"Brad Bushman, who studies catharsis and anger at Iowa State University, has found that “[e]xpressing your anger, even against inanimate objects, doesn’t make you less angry at all.

In laboratory experiments, whacking a punching bag or attacking a pillow actually seems to increase anger, not tame it. It’s been tested several times, and there’s virtually no scientific evidence to support catharsis.”

Of course, from a business perspective, that's probably a good thing. Repeat customers.
posted by leotrotsky at 11:39 AM on November 28, 2016 [16 favorites]

"Brad Bushman, who studies catharsis and anger at Iowa State University, has found that “[e]xpressing your anger, even against inanimate objects, doesn’t make you less angry at all."

Allow Harry to demonstrate...
posted by Naberius at 11:45 AM on November 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

By the way, "You're an inanimate fucking object!" would have been a much better post title.
posted by Naberius at 11:48 AM on November 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

First rule of Smash Club: Do not discredit Smash Club!
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:49 AM on November 28, 2016

You forgot the Rage Cage
posted by ACair at 11:56 AM on November 28, 2016

Rage Cage?
posted by Greg_Ace at 11:57 AM on November 28, 2016 [3 favorites]

I thought these were all basically rip-offs of Delocated's Rage Cage.
posted by Saxon Kane at 12:12 PM on November 28, 2016

I had this idea back in 1998 in NYC, I was going to call it Break Stuff New York.
posted by vrakatar at 12:12 PM on November 28, 2016

DAMMNIT
posted by Saxon Kane at 12:12 PM on November 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

Professor Childermass's Fuss Closet, but monetized
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:18 PM on November 28, 2016

I can only think that this would reinforce the neural pathways that connect anger and physical violence.
posted by rocket88 at 12:21 PM on November 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

I was taking a load of old, stripped-for-parts copiers to the dump one day. As I'm heaving machines into the pile, the guy next to me walks over and says, "May I?" I made a "help yourself" gesture, and he proceeded to kick and pound the crap out of one of the copiers. "Man, that felt great!" he said. "Cheaper than a therapist!"
posted by xedrik at 12:26 PM on November 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

I read a story when I was about 11 or 12, regarding a children's group therapy session in which you could do or say anything, although looking back on it, I would think there probably were some limits. At any rate, I told my mother that I would smash crockery. She was a bit perturbed, but did give me a broken teacup that I was allowed to break completely but only under controlled circumstances.

I found it most unfulfilling.

Many years later, when I was working for a boss who was simply insufferable, I kept cardboard tubes in my office. Cardboard tubes such as those around which wrapping paper is sold. When I was absolutely fed up with him, I would close my office door and whack the living fuck out of a tube against my large metal filing cabinet. It certainly didn't help in the long run, but let me say that one day I was out of tubes and instead I slammed my office door as hard as I could, which raised some eyebrows at this stuffy New-York-based law firm.

Cardboard tubes and door slamming, thumbs up.
posted by janey47 at 12:32 PM on November 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

oh, and to this day, resistance work, such as lifting weights, tends to drain away excess anger for me.
posted by janey47 at 12:33 PM on November 28, 2016 [5 favorites]

You forgot the Rage Cage yt

Nope, it's the last link above the fold.
posted by amnesia and magnets at 12:33 PM on November 28, 2016

the_stress_reliever.exe
posted by Rhaomi at 12:41 PM on November 28, 2016

Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice opens with a relatively intense Esalen-like therapy scene in which the titular characters let all of their feels out and get all "authentic." I think the scene would have been much more effective with Natalie Wood screaming and pounding the shit out of inanimate objects. Come to think of it, she did do that, but that part of the scene was only a few seconds long.
posted by blucevalo at 12:57 PM on November 28, 2016

Heading out to a specially-operated anger room is so time-consuming. Much more convenient to install anger release machines in public places.
posted by ckape at 1:32 PM on November 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

They have a place like this near me. It's called a bowling alley.
posted by sixpack at 1:39 PM on November 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

I know at least one snake person who thinks her father exists to provide this.

Personally I think this is both ineffective AND inappropriate, but she's not my kid.
posted by elizilla at 2:06 PM on November 28, 2016

YOUR TENSION HAS BEEN EXTERMINATED
posted by Johnny Wallflower at 4:43 PM on November 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

This is why it's fun to go to my local city dump. You back your vehicle up to a giant concrete pit, with big bulldozers down below pushing things about. It is cathartic to heave things in there with more force than is really necessary, being careful not to go tumbling in yourself.
posted by bepe at 4:56 PM on November 28, 2016

I have spent much of the past two weeks reading up on how to manage my anger, and still I don't want this. The presidential mannequins are unsettling, no matter the candidates. I'd rather stay here, paging through the Thich Nhat Hanh and eating my emotions. We are what we pretend to be, &c., as the man says.

I would like to violently assault some copiers and computers, but only particular ones, at the point of service or failure thereof. And then I just know I'd feel terrible. I tend to curse at them instead, which is all well and good until you forget you're sharing a small office with people on speakerphone.
posted by Countess Elena at 5:09 PM on November 28, 2016 [1 favorite]

Studies show that this kind of activity leads to video games!
posted by Obscure Reference at 6:12 PM on November 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

While this doesn't make any sense as an anger management technique, I can imagine how people might enjoy it for its own sake, in much the same way that I love to set off really big fireworks - partly because they're pretty, but also partly just because it's fun to blow something up.
posted by crotchety old git at 6:42 PM on November 28, 2016 [2 favorites]

Once when a friend of mine was angry at the world, I brought her an empty beer bottle and a pair of safety goggles and suggested she let some rage out by smashing the bottle on the floor, which I promised to clean up afterward.

She hurled the bottle with all her strength... and it bounced a little, wholly intact. A second try yielded the same results plus collapsing on the floor in hysterics of laughter. Worked even better than I expected, and I didn't have to sweep.
posted by aws17576 at 7:16 PM on November 28, 2016 [4 favorites]

When I was married and suddenly came down with herpes I smashed some furniture and it was good to get that out of my system before she got home. The glass coffee table was the best, flipping end over end through that long cathedral-ceilinged open floor plan to smash on the slate fireplace.

Therapist the next day says "You just smashed stuff right?" Well part of the basement has a dirt floor- Yeah I just smashed stuff for godsake. " That's good. Stuff is good.

So we separated and kind of made up, slowly. And then she discovers that the guy she was cheating on me with had been cheating on her. You got that part? I still don't.

I'd left all my tools at the house when I moved out. So she takes my auto body hammer to his Cherokee. Every bit of glass, the headlights, the body panels. When she gets to the rear windshield she loses her grip and the hammer flies into the back of the Cherokee. She tries to get it but the guy has so many tools back there she takes the wrong one. Leaving the one with my name on it in the vehicle.

We owned a business together in Chapel Hill and had separated our schedules so that I opened alone and the cops came in and asked me to come to the station and wouldn't let me see if I could get someone to cover, just had to lock up and go with them. I didn't ask. They seemed wary and concerned and I figured I didn't want to get them excited.

So I'm genuinely surprised to be taken to a small room with a table and 4 chairs. They put me in front of two detectives while a third officer stood behind me. They asked me about the Cherokee, where was I blah-blah and they brought the hammer out in a plastic bag. Yes indeedy that is my hammer. But I didn't take the tools I used to restore the Ford to the apartment I live in now. I would have laughed but even if I had done it didn't warrant the way they treated me like I was so dangerous.

They showed me pictures of the vehicle. Whoever did that with that little 8 pound hammer was dangerous.
posted by Mr. Yuck at 9:36 PM on November 28, 2016 [8 favorites]

In the Curtis "documentary" Century of the Self my favorite footage is of the folks at psycho workshops beating pillows with cricket bats. And that movie has tons of great footage in it.
posted by bukvich at 10:29 PM on November 28, 2016

As I'm heaving machines into the pile, the guy next to me walks over and says, "May I?" I made a "help yourself" gesture, and he proceeded to kick and pound the crap out of one of the copiers.

Damn it feels good to be a gangsta.
posted by Harvey Kilobit at 12:01 AM on November 29, 2016 [4 favorites]

Goddammit I cannot for the life of me remember which 1970s dystopian movie --THX 138? Rollerball? Logan's Run? -- had the same idea.
posted by MartinWisse at 2:49 AM on November 29, 2016

just because it's fun to blow something up.
posted by crotchety old git at 6:42 PM on November 28

so beautiful
posted by GospelofWesleyWillis at 11:39 AM on November 29, 2016 [1 favorite]