Wreck It to Repair It — How Rage Rooms Are Helping People De-Str

By Cashmere Morley

“There are all sorts of people out there,” said Rachel Crawford, co-owner of Destruction Depot, “...some people do yoga, some people meditate, and sometimes people just need to break things.” 

Destruction Depot appears unassuming from the outside. Located in a strip of warehouse space in Whitmore Lake, one may presume it is akin to the myriad of other blue-collar masonry or fabrication spaces that pepper the lot. A quick peek inside reveals a different story: a weapons wall filled with baseball bats, wrenches, hammers, and the like sprawls one area of the depot, plastic milk crates full of glass trinkets, old DVDs, alcohol bottles, and more spans another. 

The impending wreckage comes with a uniform. Visitors first enter a dressing room where they are prepped with a coverall, a hardhat, safety glasses, and ear plugs if desired. 

The scene is set. The weapon chosen. 

But before any glass flies, a question unfurls: how does a business that makes money off of destruction find itself so successful? 

For years, Crawford’s husband, Matt Crawford, had a dream to build a space where he could allow his destructive impulses to fly. A retired army veteran, Matt essentially “blew things up for a living” and wanted a place where he could destress after he exited the military. The army life was behind him, but the itch to destroy was very much inlaid. 

In 2018, the couple decided to turn that dream into a reality, opening their first location in Brighton, where it would eventually move to Whitmore Lake once they outgrew the space. Rachel was dubious about the concept of a rage room at first; she was not sold on the idea that people would pay to break things. 

However, Rachel, a retired civil counselor, quickly noticed that a lot of people coming into the depot were fighting their own internal war. Sometimes a family member had passed. A marriage had dissolved. A job had ceased. The common denominator was that a stress, whatever it was, needed to be released. 

“We are a rage room, but with a more therapeutic setting,” Crawford explains. “Most of the rage rooms only offer 20-minute sessions. The room is set up when you come in. You feel rushed for time. Here, we have found that people can be very invested in what they want to destroy.”

She recalled a man entering the depot who had just quit a job he loathed. He requested the room be set to look like an office, complete with a printer and office desk. Crawford said the scenes of destruction people request can sometimes be very specific as those people come in to deal with particular moments of darkness in their lives. “If I could describe Destruction Depot in one word, it would be cathartic,” said Crawford. “You really get to lay out all your frustrations, in here.”

Another woman requested distinct liquor bottles to smash, the same kind that her alcoholic father had drunk himself to death with. Loss and loathing can sometimes be healed with glass and a baseball bat, so long as it is in the right setting. Destruction Depot hopes to help those people who need that setting find a home, if only for an hour. 

“We get a lot of people coming in for grief and loss sessions,” said Crawford. “We’ve had women come in after fertility troubles. A group of ladies in their 60’s came in and wrote on the walls after a cancer diagnosis. We see a lot of LGBTQ people here, as well. And of course, we did see an uptick of guests during the start of the pandemic, after we were allowed to reopen. We try to offer an outlet for whatever people are facing.” 

Crawford said their audience is about sixty percent women, noting that “as the gender stereotype goes, a lot of men have super physical jobs where they can often get out their frustrations during work. Women have to hold a lot of things in.”

A $20 fee covers the cost of one person, and the rage room. From there, breakables cost between $4 and $50. The average guest spends about $30 to $50 dollars per person, including the room fee. This experience is for ages 13 and up. Flammables, explosives, and liquids are prohibited, but bringing outside breakables is permitted. For 45 minutes, guests can close themselves into one of the depot’s two plywood and chicken wire rage rooms and unleash their emotions on whatever inanimate objects they have chosen to destroy. 

What happens after that is anyone’s guess. Crawford said it is not uncommon to hear yelling and smashing from where she is in the reception room, as people really allow themselves to let go in the destruction rooms. The depot also rents out bluetooth speakers, if one would enjoy a backdrop of music amongst the demolition.

Xandra Hampton, an employee at Destruction Depot, recalled a particular guest that stuck out in her mind. “One time, a guy came in here after a divorce. He asked to destroy a car door. By the end of his session, he was covered in sweat, from head to toe. The car door was bent in half and thrown to the other side of the room. We see all kinds of people in here.” 

In fact, there is a particular section of the weapons wall dedicated to just those kinds of people: the guests who have gone so far into destruction mode that they have broken a weapon during their time in the rage room. 

“If you break a weapon, you get to sign it,” said Crawford, “and then it goes up on our weapons wall.”   

It can be jarring the first time a weapon eats through a stack of glassware. The snap of the materials together is sharp and startling. The way the objects of choice, stacked on large rubber buckets, explode and ricochet like glass confetti off the walls, is often a visual one may think of but never actually conjure in real life. “I’m sure almost everyone at one point has wanted to throw a coffee mug across the room. Here, they get to do it,” said Crawford.  

At the beginning, the breakables were all sourced from donations or thrift stores. Facebook Marketplace was an easy way to pick up free items; now, Destruction Depot is so busy, they purchase bulk out-of-season furniture from thrift stores. Objects are recycled when they can be after they are destroyed.

“My favorite part of my job is just experiencing the highs and lows with the people that come through the door,” said Crawford. “I love seeing people leave our rooms and just appear lighter, like they have one less trouble than when they came in.”

If you would like to experience a rage room, check out the Destruction Depot at 11048 Hi Tech Drive in Whitmore Lake or @destructiondepot on Instagram. They are open seven days a week. Go to destructiondepot.com for hours of operation. 

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