Portland entrepreneur Mark Maher says it was around March 2025 when he and his family got to experience firsthand the thrill of smashing ceramic plates, glass vases, TVs and other electronic devices. That experience took place at a friend’s rage room in Boise, Idaho, where customers book sessions to don goggles, gloves and other safety equipment to obliterate objects in a controlled, safe environment.
Soon after, Maher opened Rage Room Portland, which celebrated its one-year anniversary this month by opening its second location inside Stickmen Brewing Company in Tualatin.
Business is also booming at OutRaged Rage Room, which opened in Vancouver in 2019. Owner Tera Gale says her three themed rage rooms are usually booked back to back weekends, with individuals or groups of up to 15 people paying to smash not only electronics and glassware but also personal objects they might find cathartic to destroy, such as a wedding dress from a failed marriage.
Gale and Maher join us to share what they think is behind the appeal of rage rooms, where the adage “you break it, you buy it” is taking on new meaning.
Note: The following transcript was transcribed using AI and validated for accuracy, readability and formatting by an OPB volunteer.
Geoff Norcross: From the Gert Boyle Studio at OPB, this is Think Out Loud. I’m Geoff Norcross. There’s a song by Limp Bizkit that I can’t quote much from right here, but one line sums it up nicely: “Give me somethin’ to break. Just give me somethin’ to break.” It’s a song from 1999, but it hits hard today, based on how rage rooms are doing lately. Business is booming at establishments that only exist to let you come in and absolutely obliterate stuff.
We’re gonna talk to two rage room owners now. Mark Maher is the owner of Rage Room Portland, which just celebrated its one-year anniversary. And Tera Gale owns OutRaged Rage Room in Vancouver. Welcome to both of you, it’s great to have you on the show.
Tera Gale: Thank you.
Mark Maher: Thanks for having us.
Norcross: How is business right now?
Maher: It’s booming. It’s good.
Gale: It is.
[Laughter]
Norcross: For both of you?
Gale: Yes.
Maher: It’s raging.
Norcross: Raging, good. Why do you think that is?
Maher: I think that people, first and foremost, want to come out and just have a great time and have a great kinda social experience, eat some food, drink some beers and rage. What do you think?
Gale: I think it’s more of letting loose, getting messy, thinking outside the box. It’s not your typical movie and a dinner. It’s rage together, stay together. [Laughs]
Norcross: Why can you tell me about the people who come to see you?
Gale: We have all different kinds of people. We allow all ages, from young to old. I’ve seen 98-year-olds in there, as young as 2. And they’re from all walks of life.
Maher: Yeah, I would agree. We allow 10 and up, but it’s all ages. It’s team building events, it’s corporations, but it’s also birthday parties, date nights, going out with your friends. It’s everything.
Gale: Bachelor parties, bachelorette parties, divorce parties.
Norcross: Divorce parties…
Maher: Divorce parties are big.
Gale: Yes. [Laughs]
Norcross: I imagine that would be vivid.
Gale: Yes, it is. [Laughter] We’ve seen 2-foot posters of people coming in to throw things at.
Norcross: Oh, so people can bring stuff in.
Gale: Yeah, they can bring pictures in.
Norcross: What are the rules around that?
Gale: None of my business, what you bring in there. No food.
Maher: We don’t allow political statements or anything like that. We don’t like to dabble into that. We like to keep it away from that and just keep it on the fun and excitement of breaking things. But yeah, people definitely come in when they’re going through hard times, as well as obviously just coming out to have a great time and a fun experience. But a lot of people come in to just get a break when they’re going through a harder time in their life.
Norcross: How does it work when you come to your establishments? What do I need to know? What do I need to prepare myself for? What do you do?
Gale: Loud music and breaking stuff. With ours, you come in, sign a waiver, we have you watch a safety video. And then you get all suited up, and then you go in there, you get a 5-gallon bucket of breakables. You can add on stuff like printers, TVs, VCRs, VHS tapes.
Norcross: Real “Office Space” moment right there.
Gale: Yeah, “Office Space.” If you get a printer, we even play the song for you. [Laughter] But you just go and get suited up, and you go let loose.
Norcross: What do you find that people really enjoy breaking more than any other?
Gale: They love glass bottles, so a lot of them will reenact bar scenes. Definitely printers too, and TVs, electronics. A lot of people get really mad at their electronics lately.
Maher: I think everyone has had an issue with the printer at some point in their life and has wanted to take a baseball bat at it.
Norcross: Yeah, that would be satisfying. Tera, let’s start with you about the inspiration for creating your space. Why did you make your rage room?
Gale: So I suffered from PTSD from a robbery, basically, back in 2017. And then when we moved up here – we’re from Utah – my husband was going to helicopter school. Things weren’t working out, and he was cleaning out the garage. He went to throw something, it hit the ground and just shattered, and it was music to my ears. So I’m like, “Can I do this?” And he’s like, “Sure?” So he basically let me throw a fit in our garage. And I can’t even describe how it made me feel, it made me feel alive and just relieved.
So I was like, there has to be something like this. We started researching. And we started seven years ago, so there wasn’t much around then. So we kind of had to start from scratch and just build it what we knew how to, and it’s been great.
Norcross: Have you seen trends over the last seven years? Is it different from when you started in some way?
Gale: So when we started, it was COVID. We had a lot of people coming in. We had to do it differently though. So it’d be like one group at a time, sanitize, next group at a time. We weren’t able to utilize all of our rage rooms at the same time. But we did really well during COVID because a lot of people were mad.
Norcross: And Mark, your place has been open for a year now. Why did you start it?
Maher: We’ve been running ax throwing, Celtic Axe has been around for seven years. Eilif from Portland Axe Throwing actually got us going at a brewery in Oregon City. So we were looking for other kinds of activities that people could do. We partner with breweries like Hopworks or Stickmen, and StormBreaker. And then we were looking for other activities to bring in that people could do when they’re out at a teambuilding event or for birthday parties.
Norcross: Just to interrupt here, I’m wondering about the wisdom of having ax throwing and rage rooms so beer-adjacent?
Maher: I know, a lot of people say that and a lot of people say about insurance, right? But what we do is we partner with brewpubs. And I come from an Irish background, and pubs are like family and community. We’ve got ax marshals and rage rangers that make sure everyone’s safe. We don’t want anyone that’s intoxicated to be throwing axes or raging anything. But definitely eat some food, if you’re having a good time and then after you want to have a pint of beer, that’s totally fine. Basically, our coaches are there to make sure everyone’s safe.
Norcross: Can you talk more about the safety aspect? What else do you do to make sure people don’t hurt themselves in there?
Maher: A lot.
Gale: They have to have on closed-toed shoes. We provide coveralls that they wear over their clothes, and then they have to wear cut-proof gloves and then helmets or paintball masks, basically. And then they sign a very lengthy waiver.
Maher: Full coveralls. But in our seven years of ax throwing, we’ve had at most a couple splinters, because again we pride ourselves. I mean, we wouldn’t be in business if it wasn’t safe.
Norcross: Can you talk about that transition from ax throwing to rage rooms? What’s the jump?
Maher: It’s the same thing essentially. It’s an event and experience to do when you’re out at teambuilding events and you’re going out for birthday parties, holidays and things like that. What we pitch to our brewery partners is let’s bring you in more people, let’s have fun at your location, so you’re not just a standalone location offering food and drink. Let’s have an activity there that’s different than your regular teambuilding event, that isn’t like bowling or maybe golfing, it’s inclusive to everyone. Because everyone has had an issue with the printer in their life and could rage it, from the new employee to the CEO.
Gale: Or the Portland traffic getting here, this will make me rage.
[Laughter]
Norcross: They bring a lot to your rooms, I get that.
Tera, you mentioned earlier that you were inspired to open your room because of your own experience with PTSD and just being able to go off for a while helped. Do you hear those stories from other people who come to see you all the time?
Gale: All the time. They’ll say it’s cheaper than therapy, better than therapy. But we also have therapists and psychiatrists bring their patients in and have them do rage sessions. So my big thing is everybody expresses themselves differently. So whether you need to have a therapy session there with your therapist or psychiatrist…
Norcross: That actually happens, people come with their therapist?
Gale: Oh yeah, 100%, all the time. So we have like 15 active therapists that bring in their patients for things like this. And then we also partner with foster homes, so they’ll bring foster kids in who are just going through a rough time and just need to let it out in a different way.
Norcross: Well, I can see how a session in your room might make you feel better, but does it actually have therapeutic benefit that is lasting?
Gale: Definitely, yes. Because you’re getting to scream, let it out, kind of thing. When I was seeing my therapist, it would be about breathing work, right? But then by the end of it, I’m like, if you tell me to breathe one more time, I’m going to break something in here. But we definitely say see your therapist as well, this isn’t a fix all. But we do hear all the time that this is better than therapy.
Norcross: Mark, can you talk about your first experience with a rage room? What do you remember from it?
Maher: So we went for spring break out to Boise, Idaho, and we went to an ax throwing location that had rage rooms as well. We took the kids. And I was apprehensive. I wasn’t thinking I’d love it or anything like that. And I talked to the owner there and he was like, “It’s doing great Mark, maybe I should think about it for Portland.” But then my kids went in there, and right away they’re just smashing things. Again, to Tera’s point, you get a relief. And then just seeing my kids, I mean they just had a great time. My wife, she couldn’t smash this cute little teacup, so she took that with her. She didn’t have it in her to rage that one. But it’s a relief, and it’s just really fun.
Norcross: Does it ever get ugly? I mean, do people turn on each other inside your rooms?
Gale: Oh no, never. I’ve never seen that before. I’ve had a breakup happen in there, but they’ve just brought like read receipts and put them in bottles and smash it in front of each other and leave.
Norcross: Your rooms have different themes?
Gale: Yes, our rooms do. Do yours?
Maher: We do neon-themed rooms and music, but it’s basically just a rage room.
Gale: Ours, we have our Graffiti Room which lets people write on the walls. Then our last session of the night, they get to graffiti in there. So it’s all of their feelings, all of their stuff in the rooms. And then same with our Fired Up rooms, it’s basically what fuels your fire, and then fire everywhere. But they also write their feelings out on the walls in there. And then we have an “Alice in Wonderland” theme room, which is called the Shroom Room. And we focus that one more towards kids, because I don’t want people writing crazy stuff in there. So that way that one’s just more for kids. It just is like, “Off with their heads” and “We’re all mad here” kind of theme.
Norcross: Where do you find the stuff that you let people break?
Maher: We’ve a partnership with Oregon Dog Rescue, which is your neighbor down here. So we go around and we call it Glass Hound, and we pick up glass from local restaurants and pubs all over. They give us their glass, we take it back to our place, and then we wash it and then get it ready to rage. And then we give a percentage back to the Oregon Dog Rescue and Puplandia. It helps the bartenders get invested in what we’re trying to do and just makes it easier than basically just dumpster diving, which no one likes to do.
Gale: We started out that way, definitely. [Laughs]
Norcross: And now?
Gale: Now we have contracts and sources which we get all of our bottles through and our symmetrics and glasses to break. I won’t go into detail because then I’d let all my secrets out of how I don’t have to dumpster dive anymore.
Norcross: How do you respond to criticisms that the rooms may be fun, but they don’t really help people address the root causes of their anger or develop sustainable tactics for managing it?
Gale: I mean, I don’t think that that’s our point is to say like, “Hey, come here to release everything and this is how you’re going to deal with it.” There is criticism from things, like that’s not healthy. But I remember being little and my grandma throwing dishes out the back door when she was mad, or my grandpa taking a bat to a tree. Everybody gets angry and you need to release it somehow, and it’s better to do it in a safe, healthy space than to let it out on the road or wherever else.
Norcross: Same for you, Mark?
Maher: Yeah, I think to her point here, it’s a pressure relief thing. I mean, we’re here for entertainment. We don’t claim to be therapy. If people can get in there and they feel relief from what they’re dealing with, then I’m all for that, and I’m happy that we can both offer a place for them to experience that.
Gale: And every time somebody leaves, don’t they leave smiling?
Maher: Yes.
Gale: Every time. So on our wall, we even say, “You’re welcome,” because they all leave just smiling.
Maher: It’s a lot of smiles and laughing, it’s not sorrow.
Gale: Nobody’s came out mad.
Norcross: Is there anybody you think this is not a good outlet for?
Gale: We’ll have people who are on the spectrum with loud noises that don’t like it, but we offer earplugs and headphones too. But they honestly love it. There’s some people that will come in and be like that’s too loud, but, well, it’s a rage room, so I can’t really quiet down the breaking of stuff.
Norcross: Do you anticipate ever having to turn somebody away?
Gale: We don’t allow alcohol or anything like that. So if they come in like really drunk or anything we would not allow them in. Same with closed-toed shoes. If you don’t have closed-toed shoes, you have to go get some or you can’t participate.
Norcross: You, Mark, opened your second location inside Stickmen Brewing in Tualatin – just this month, in fact, congratulations for that. Are there any lessons that you’ve learned during your first year in business that you’re applying to this new location?
Maher: Well, there’s a lot. I mean, it’s a lot of work. It’s a ton of work.
Norcross: What do you mean?
Maher: Well, from the business of ax throwing where we were before, you’re just throwing axes at the targets, there’s a lot of wood to deal with. But with the rage rooms it’s dump trucks, it’s cleaning, it’s glass, it’s PPE gear, it’s more cleaning, it’s insurance, it’s getting all these electronics and printers and then disposing of them. The thing we’re most proud about is learning how to recycle everything. At the beginning we were just going to the dump and we didn’t want to have anything to do with that, and it’s also very expensive. But now we’re 100% recycling all the glass, all the electronics that we go through to E-Cycling here in Portland, Oregon, and then Glass To Glass on Columbia Boulevard.
Norcross: Is your second room different than your first in some way?
Maher: It’s the same, essentially. Better building. And we have a mural artist named Derek. They came out and he does amazing work, so got some really cool murals up there.
Norcross: It’s funny you mentioned the creative work, because this is from a certain point of view the antithesis of a space for creation. It’s a space for destruction. In the way that a pottery studio is a place for you to express yourself creatively, this is a way for you to deconstruct.
Gale: Exactly.
Norcross: Do you ever think that this model is based on creating an outlet for destructive impulses instead of creative ones?
Gale: Not really, just because everybody is going to throw tantrums in their lives. It’s inevitable. With kids too, that’s a big thing, with kids being like, “You can’t touch this, you can’t break this.” For them to get to go into somewhere and actually touch and break the things – like when you are going through a store with your mom and they’re like, “Hands to yourself, hands to yourself” – it’s kind of like a rule-free zone of where you can let it out.
Maher: My sister-in-law Carly was in the other day, and she’s a real rule follower. And she just had the biggest smile on her face and was like, “I felt like I could just let go for a minute here.”
Gale: Let your hair down, let loose, have fun, but in a safe manner.
Norcross: Do you remember a client that came through who had a reaction and an experience that was surprising in some way?
Gale: I’ve had somebody who came in that actually triggered their PTSD.
Norcross: They didn’t know they had it?
Gale: Yeah. So rather than with mine where it helped it, it brought back something that was just like no-go. That’s only actually happened to us once, and it was a surprise date that her husband was taking her on and [he] brought her in there. It was, “Nope, we’re not doing that.”
Norcross: What did you do?
Gale: We let them go to our black light paint throwing room. They got to go throw paint at each other instead with ‘90s music.
Maher: There you go, cheer them up.
Norcross: What about you, Mark? Any kind of stories that you can point to for unusual experiences?
Maher: Not really, it’s kind of your run-of-the-mill birthday parties. But the interesting thing for me coming into this, as a businessperson, I just wanted bodies in the door. But I was really proud and happy, surprised, like 60% of people are just going to have a great time for birthday parties or whatever, but 40% roughly are coming in really because they need a break. We were talking about this earlier [speaking to Tera]. Valentine’s Day is one of our busiest days. They’re going with their girlfriends, or a bunch of guys come together, they go in and they just need a break. And that community that they’re building together, it’s not just about raging, it’s about being there with friends and having that social experience, I think is what is working, what’s so great about our business.
Gale: Yes, and the support. Like if you get a group of friends coming in, they’ll cheer each other on. “Remember he did this to you,” and smash a bottle, kind of thing. They’re cheerleaders. [Laughs]
Norcross: I’m wondering what you think this experience of owning these rage rooms has taught each of you about managing your own feelings, your own anger, your own stress?
Gale: Mine has more been, especially with the writings on our walls, that there’s a lot of trauma out there and people are going through a lot of hard times. It makes me look at mine like, OK, you can deal with this. They went through that. It gives me a stronger backbone and makes me more sympathetic to other people as well.
Norcross: What about you, Mark?
Maher: I think that there’s a lot of outlets for when people get stressed out, like working out, going on a run. And if you maybe if you don’t have those options, this is another great alternative. I think that is what’s really cool about it.
Norcross: I’ve been sitting here listening to you and you’re both just so open and so upbeat, and you sound healthy. [Laughter] And I’m wondering if it’s because you’re adjacent to this activity in the way that you are?
Gale: I love the sound. You probably have your favorite glass.
Maher: I go to sleep tonight listening to it. I record it.
[Laughter]
Gale: My favorite is sheet glass. The sound of sheet glass or windows breaking is amazing.
Norcross: So satisfying. Tera, Mark, this was a blast. Thank you so much.
Maher: Thank you for having us.
Gale: Thank you, yes.
Norcross: Tera Gale is the owner of OutRaged Rage Room in Vancouver and Mark Maher is the owner of the Rage Room Portland.
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