Gillette woman opens up town's first rage room

Blakeman asked Sarason what music she wanted to listen to while she smashed the items to pieces.

“I’ll listen to anything,” Sarason said.

“Shania Twain?” Blakeman asked.

“I’ll listen to anything but 90s country,” Sarason replied.

Spotify generated an angry rock playlist with bands such as System of a Down, Rage Against the Machine and Saliva.

Sarason went into the room, picked up an aluminum baseball bat and began destroying the glass and electronics. In about five minutes, she was finished.

“It feels kind of good,” she said. “I was having a pretty good day, but I think I let some stuff go today.”

Blakeman is the owner of Staged Rage, a rage room on West Lakeway Road.

According to Vice Media, the first rage room opened in Japan in 2008. They became popular in the U.S. in the 2010s, and are marketed as a controlled environment where people can relieve some stress by breaking things.

“It’s just an outlet for people to take their aggressions out,” Blakeman said. “There’s not too many of those places in town for younger kids, or older kids.”

She previously worked as a substitute teacher for the Campbell County School District. Blakeman said she “always feels like Gillette’s last” to get anything fun, and she grew tired of visiting bigger cities and seeing them have options for entertainment that weren’t available in Campbell County.

So she decided this year to put matters into her own hands. This summer, she went through the process of opening a rage room in Gillette. This included finding a location that would be cool with people breaking things, and working with the city to make sure everything was up to code.

Since then, she’s been surprised how busy it’s been the first month.

“There were times we had to close down because our dumpster was so full,” she said. “(Another time) we had to shut down because our shelves were empty.”

Staged Rage is located at 403 West Lakeway Road and is open from 3:30-8 p.m. Mondays and Tuesdays, 3:30-10 p.m. Fridays, noon to 10 p.m. Saturdays and by appointment on Sundays, Wednesdays and Thursdays. People can make appointments online at stagedrage.com or by calling 660-2526.

A waiver must be signed, and no open-toed shoes are allowed due to safety reasons.

Blakeman takes donations, and she went to a lot of garage sales this summer. She also frequents the local thrift stores about three times a week just to keep the shelves stocked.

Her family wasn’t fully on board at the beginning, she said.

“They all thought we were a little crazy, but now that it’s happened they’re very excited for it,” she said.

Staged Rage offers different packages. The more stuff you want to break, the more you pay. The shelves are full of glassware, plates, keyboards and computer towers, just to name a few. Several car windshields were stacked against a wall.

And because of the holidays, there is a shelf dedicated to Christmas items. Blakeman said some people have been taking advantage of this because they’ve already gotten tired of hearing Christmas music or seeing Christmas decorations up before Thanksgiving.

In addition to the rage rooms, Staged Rage also offers a splatter house, which is a less aggressive alternative where people are given neon paint and pump guns and are invited to shoot paint all over a black light room.

“I don’t know if there’s much aggression in there, it’s almost calming,” she said.

It’s taken Blakeman a little getting used to. The loud noises were jarring at first.

“I love it. It scared me a couple times when they first started because it would make me jump but I’m getting used to the loud sounds,” she said.

She’s gotten to the point where she can tell what electronic item is being broken, just by listening to the sound.

Tuesday afternoon, a group had destroyed a printer that she hadn’t properly prepared, a fact that she didn’t learn until afterward when there was ink all over the walls.

“I thought I took the (ink) cartridge out. Clearly I did not,” she said. “So now I have to learn how to take apart printers better.”

Blakeman has seen a wide range of people come through. Some of them are happy, some are angry and others are just in the mood to break stuff. She’s hosted a lot of birthday parties, and if the opportunity for expansion arises, she’d like to have a dedicated space for parties.

The glass bottles are easy to sweep up, but things can get a little messy when electronics are involved. It can take Blakeman 20 to 30 minutes to clean up after a group is done raging.

There is an option for people to bring in their own stuff to break, but Blakeman had to make changes to that after one gentleman brought eight glass doors that he wanted to break.

“I’ll never do that again, it took me three hours to clean up,” she said.

Now she limits it to whatever people can fit into a box.

Blakeman said rage rooms are one of those things that people might not understand at first.

“I think anybody that goes in there and tries it, they’re like, ‘Oh, OK, I get it now, that was fun,’” she said.

Blakeman has lived in Gillette since high school, and she’s watched as people have struggled to relieve stress or get out their aggression. And with mental health at the forefront of people’s minds now more than ever, Blakeman believes Staged Rage can help.

“Gillette has had a hard time with kids bottling up stuff,” she said. “If we can just help out one, that’d be great.”