Want to go out, have some fun, and decompress, but tired of the same old bars, restaurants, and clubs? Well, Wrecking Club introduces a new way to have fun and let off some steam from your hectic every day life—by destroying stuff!
At Wrecking Club, New York City’s first destruction room, you can bash a laptop with a baseball bat, pulverize glass with a sledgehammer, thrash furniture, throw china against the wall, and more—all while blasting your favorite pump-up, get-hyped music on the room speakers. All electronics are separately recycled, and biodegradable items are disposed of accordingly too, so your conscious can rest at ease while you carnage the electronics and wooden table. And if you have any particular item you’d like to bash in a socially acceptable and safe manner (post-breakup ritual anyone?) you are welcome to bring those as well.
We recently visited Wrecking Club, located in the Garment District, to speak to founder Tom Daly, and smash a few things ourselves. Tom, who previously worked in the corporate world, sought to start a business in something that he enjoyed. “I always want to do something fun all day every day. So I started to think of things that I liked to do and figured if I could make a business out of them. This is something I thought other people would like to do—it’s fun.”
Tom believes the popularity of the place lies in the appeal to do something new and fun. “You’re taught you can’t break things on a daily basis, or at all. It lets people break out of what they’re supposed to do. It lets people get out of the norm.” In fact, the idea of demolition rooms as solely being for stress relieving purposes is misconceived, according to him. “We get everything from the hardcore trader to the soccer mom, and from kids to people in their sixties.”
Tom tells us about observing how people transform in the room, from tentative first swing to all out destruction. He says his guests tend fit into two categories: those who destroy everything in minutes, and those who take their time and meticulously go through every piece. “It’s cool to see people’s transformation,” he remarks. “When they come out, they’re unstressed, they’re sweaty, they’re tired.” The only time when it was not so cool for him was when he accidentally left his own laptop in one of the rooms and returned later to clean up the mangled remnants!
Wrecking Club currently operates two rooms, but due to high demand they are looking to add another two rooms. One of the additional rooms will include an event space for company parties with catering services, something that has been requested before. Some additional features that will soon be added are helmet-mounted GoPro cameras that give visitors a first-person video souvenir of their visit, and LCD screen walls along the entrance that will feature all the latest videos of visitors destroying stuff.
“I think people get tired of just going to the bar every night. Or just going to dinner. Life gets too repetitive. Let’s do something different.”
