Have you ever gotten mad at the traffic on Kellogg and wanted to Hulk out? Well, if you take the Seneca exit to Delano, you’ll find an outlet for all that rage.
“You can't break things at home and then be OK with it,” said Oscar Maldonado, the owner of Let’s Smash. “Here, though, you get to make the mess and then leave because we'll clean it up.”
Let’s Smash is a smash room, a type of business that specializes in being an outlet for your anger. Patrons can pay to break any number of things: bottles, plates … even TVs.
“One day I met a buddy of mine,” Maldonado said. “We were talking about just stress, right? Just stress at work, stress at home, and where can you go in a healthy environment and take that stress out?”
So, Maldonado decided to purchase a smash room a couple of years ago from a friend. Let’s Smash has been in operation since 2022.
Charity Brown joined her daughter at a bachelorette party there on a Saturday morning last month. She surveyed the items that her group was about to pummel.
“Well, it looks like some lady brought in some plates … definitely some glass, maybe some cans,” Brown said.
“I'm excited to see what's in there.”
All the items that get broken are sourced from different places across town. From bottles from Grace Hill Winery to donations from people looking to get rid of junk.
“Every week … estate sales people will call me and say, ‘Hey, look, you know, such and such is moving out. And … we have all this stuff,’” Maldonado said.
“People buy new china all the time, and they're like, ‘Well, what do I do with this old stuff?” Well, we'll come pick it up.”
For younger kids, Let’s Smash hosts splatter parties where you can let the paint fly on walls and canvases, without having to clean up the mess.
Maldonado hopes to expand the business to add more rooms and maybe even some games.
“Something I'm wanting, hopefully, is to turn this into something where you can have, not just breaking but … have an arcade attached,” Maldonado said. “Or, I want to make this to where it's a family event, where you can come in, bring kids, family, can be out there.”
Let’s Smash gets many different types of clientele, but the space is particularly a big attraction for women.
“We've had divorce parties,” Maldonado said. “Yeah, February is actually one of our bigger months, too. We get a lot of people that book up in advance for that.
“We get people that are … not recommending it … but we get people that are like, ‘Hey, can we print pictures and stuff and just break things on it or paint it?’ And I was like, ‘Yeah.’ ”
Let’s Smash is located in Delano and is open Wednesday through Sunday.
