NORTH BRUNSWICK, NJ — Got an appetite for destruction? Or ever wanted to feel like Thor and his mighty hammer?

In late September, what's known as a "rage room" opened up in a nondescript warehouse area off Rt. 1 in North Brunswick. Break Stuff NJ is a 550-square-foot room people pay to enter and then spend half an hour inside breaking or destroying things — all in the name of releasing tension and pent-up anger. "They're also called 'destruction therapy centers' or 'anger rooms,'" Andrew Powers, the owner of Break Stuff NJ, said in an interview with Patch. "But it's basically just a place where you go to get your anger, stress, anxiety and all those other negative emotions out in a safe environment, without having to clean up the mess after."



For $25 a person, clients are given 25 minutes in the rage room. They are put in white safety suits, hard hats and safety googles and given access to baseball bats, sledgehammers and mallets, all provided by Powers. From there, they can smash a seemingly unlimited number of glass bottles, liquor bottles, debris and old furniture. Last week, someone even donated an old toilet to be demolished (it was disinfected first). "We'll basically give you anything that's fun to smash," said Powers, 33, who lives in North Brunswick. "We take all the stuff junk removers and Goodwill doesn't want."

Break Stuff NJ is only room of its kind in Central New Jersey; a similar business, called Rage Room, exists in Hackensack in North Jersey. "When we first opened, people were very skeptical, like, 'What is this place; is this even real?' said Powers. "Before we opened we did some testing with fruit-smashing and pumpkin-smashing events. People seemed to really enjoy it."

Powers said he was particularly inspired to open by the results of the 2016 presidential election.

"It just feels like the overall mood just changed after the 2016 election, whether you are liberal, conservative, Republican or Democrat," he said, who cautioned that he is not trying to single out President Donald Trump. "You see a lot more hate; you see less smiling people on all sides. There's a lot of repressed emotions. We just have to chill out as a people and that's what we're here for."

Break Stuff NJ also offers discounts for first responders, teachers and mental health professionals — "people who are already in the line of fire," said Powers.

So far, their main clientele seems to be couples on a date night or groups of friends.