Smash stuff for the fun of it at this NYC club
A slow, creaky elevator descends to an industrial basement lair in Midtown. It opens to a sparse, cement-floored hallway lined with large rooms. One is filled with discarded electronics and furniture, from scanners and fax machines to chairs and desks.
They are all destined for total annihilation. And I am the annihilator.
This is the Wrecking Club, a 4-month-old venue that allows patrons to smash and shatter secondhand furnishings and office equipment with a metal baseball bat or crowbar. The aim, says Wrecking Club creator Tom Daly, is to help New Yorkers de-stress in a safe and fun setting. (Better to unleash pent-up anger in a concrete-walled room than onto unsuspecting passengers on a subway car, right?)
I feel energized, powerful, even liberated while wreaking havoc.
Daly, a 29-year-old Greenwich, Conn., native who left a lucrative finance job last year to start the Wrecking Club, helps me select a high-back chair, a bulky printer, a clunky laptop and some glassware. A petite writing desk completes the mock-office setup.
“I wanted to leave the corporate world,” he tells me as I suit up into a jumpsuit and don the required safety goggles and hard hat. “I wanted it to be something fun and different and wild and sort of outside the norm. It’s my break-out-of-the-system business.”
To help get me in the mood, Daly plugs in his phone, places it in a protective box by the door and blasts a soundtrack that includes Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” and Weezer’s “Hash Pipe.”
Ready to rumble, I heave a heavy crowbar above my head and, letting out a primal scream, slam it down. Shards fly off the printer; wood splinters off the chair and the desk. I give the bat a try with a few hard swings. The laptop becomes mangled and unrecognizable after several hits.
I feel energized, powerful, even liberated while wreaking havoc.
There’s also some happiness creeping in, and I’m more than a little concerned about the endorphin-fueled high I’m feeling after my 30-minute session.
Later, after calming down, I talk with Elaine Ducharme, a clinical psychologist in Glastonbury, Conn. who specializes in trauma and abuse.
She reassures me that the Wrecking Club’s controlled destruction could be truly cathartic, just like other forms of exercise.
“For some people, when they’re really angry and frustrated, doing something angry and physical makes them feel better,” she says. “Other people, who have real anger problems, get this good feeling when they’re punching. They may not limit it, and when they get home, they may be more likely to smack their kid or smack their wife … I think we have to be careful that fun violence can beget real violence.”
The basement, whose exact address Daly e-mails to customers once appointments are confirmed — to maintain a speakeasy-like vibe, he says, currently accommodates about 100 customers per week.
He says wreckers are equally divided between men and women, and he sees a lot of couples trying it out for a date.
“I don’t think you’d forget the guy or the girl who brought you to Wrecking Club,” Daly says. “It snaps you out of your routine real quick.”
The experience costs $20 for the first half-hour for two people, and each item Daly — or one of the “destruction waiters” on staff — adds to the room costs $10 and up (cheaper for small items like wine goblets, more expensive for big ones like a baby grand piano). An average experience runs between $80 and $100 total for two people.
On my way out, feeling embarrassingly gleeful, I pass one of the basement’s few pieces of décor that doesn’t get ravaged on a daily basis: a poster from the 1999 film “Office Space,” in which three protagonists take out their rage on a printer.
The Wrecking Club is on West 38th Street between Eighth and Ninth avenues. Book appointments at 212-933-0929 or WreckingClub.com.