A table sits in the corner of a small room topped with glass bottles of various sizes and hues. They include three large liquor bottles painted mint green, adding a splash of artistry.
Calming piano music fills the room. Then Nicki Blade enters, wielding a baseball bat.
Whack! Crack! Smithereens.
Many of the bottles have been reduced to shards. A round fan grill near the table is bent from the beatdown, but a hubcap has held up just fine.
Just another evening in the breaking room at Wrecks and Effects, a business located on the third floor of the IngenuityLabs building on Hamilton Avenue on the border of the Goodrich-Kirtland Park and St. Clair-Superior neighborhoods. Its owners say they offer more than a rage room. The glass shards, twisted metal and other wreckage from what they call the wreck room are often transformed into art – either by the person who broke them or by others.
Blade, of Cleveland, a program manager at a nonprofit agency that helps house homeless veterans, wasn’t focused on art-making when she emerged from the wreck room.
“It’s so exhilarating,” she said.
Like all customers, Blade selected the music that would accompany her controlled destruction. Her choice? “Nuvole Bianche,” which is Italian for white clouds.
“I’m not a violent person, but the adrenaline from breaking stuff gives you an ethereal type of high,” Blade said.
Please don’t lift the cement block high and then slam it down
Though Blade appeared to swing the baseball bat with pure abandon, she was within Wrecks and Effects’ rules of destruction.
The rules are enforced even before a customer enters the breaking room. Co-owner Erica Thrasher helped Blade suit up. Before Blade picked up the baseball bat, she donned a heavy brown cowhide welding jacket and iridescent orange puncture-resistant chaps. Thrasher helped her put on a shield that covered her face and head, and Blade slipped on welding gloves. No open-toe shoes allowed.
The rules are posted, and customers get the rundown. The rules have evolved based on the behavior of some customers, said co-owner Tanya Schatzman.
You can’t raise a cement block over your head and slam it on the floor. (The blocks are used as extra support for tables.) You can break bottles with a bat, but you can’t smash them against a wall. You have to keep your protective gear on.
“We definitely had to expand our rules,” Schatzman said. “When they get caught up in the breaking, they start looking at everything, wanting to pick things up and slam them down.”
Though Blade was never motivated to be that destructive, she understands how people can get into a zone and not realize what they are doing.
She remembers her first time in the wreck room. Blade swung the bat so forcefully that she left exhausted. This time, she promised to quit before she was sapped of energy. After about two minutes of destruction, she reached her limit. The last time, she had stayed in the wreck room twice as long.
With each broken bottle or mangled object, Blade’s worries either faded or felt fixable.
“Once I got going, I started thinking about stuff,” she said. “Then I reached the point where I thought, I just have to get two more in and I’ll be all right.
Three cousins are 2GrownKids
Schatzman and Thrasher are cousins who grew up in a family that valued play and recreation. They liked spending time together doing such things as solving jigsaw puzzles, playing cards and running relay races.
In 2017, the cousins formed 2GrownKids, which held pop-up events focused on engaging adults in fun activities ranging from crafts to talent shows.
“There are loads of research articles that tell us that as adults we need to play more,” Schatzman said. “We knew there was a need to bring back the concept of recess for adults.”
The business is a side hustle for the cousins. Schatzman is an innovation strategist at a managed IT services company. Thrasher is a school liaison and patient navigator for the pediatric sickle cell team at a local hospital. Their cousin, Irene Booker, an insurance specialist, also helps out with the business.
In 2019, 2GrownKids moved into a space on Lakeside Avenue in Cleveland. The cousins decided to have a breaking room built and called it Wrecks and Effects. It proved popular.
Like many entertainment establishments, bars and restaurants, business fell off dramatically for 2GrownKids during the pandemic. Unable to rebound from their losses, the cousins decided last year to close the location and focus on pop up events.
But they didn’t give up the hope of once again having a brick-and-mortar business because being playtime entrepreneurs was a passion for them.
“It’s work, but it’s also an outlet,” Thrasher said. “It’s work you enjoy going to.”
Wrecks and Effects focuses on creative destruction
After their breaking sessions, customers can take some of the wreckage. Pieces of broken glass, for example, whose edges have been sanded for safety.
For some it will be a memento. For others it will be an element to incorporate into a piece of art. Both offer a nod to Wrecks and Effects’ slogan: “Where destruction meets creativity.”
“We take the rage aspect out of the traditional rage room, so that it is less anger- focused,” Schatzman said. “We use the destructive force as a means of creation.”
In a sitting area of Wrecks and Effects, there is an art station set up with supplies. They include acrylic paint, brushes, colored pencils, paper and even glow-in-the-dark paint. A mini shopping cart filled with broken glass with sanded edges sits nearby. Customers are encouraged to use the discards and the supplies to create art.
“Sometimes people don’t want to break,” Thrasher said. “They’re here for the art or just to watch and doodle on the side.”
(The wreck room has a large window, offering a clear view to spectators. )
The walls of the business, which is in a former factory, illustrate the creative destruction concept. They are covered with art created by customers and the Wrecks and Effects’ owners. Schatzman and Thrasher created a mosaic of broken mirrors spelling “Thug Love,” a hip-hop concept whose meanings can include romantic love and a couple’s resilience amid harsh economic and societal realities.
White metal resembling an easel and a wood paneling scrap, both once castoffs, now have a new life. They serve as a picture frame for a cutout photo of the renowned poet Nikki Giovanni, who was raised in Cincinnati.
“Her recent passing left me a little emotional,” Thrasher said of the tribute to Giovanni, who died in December. “She was an icon.”
The businesses’ slogan doesn’t include upcycling, but it probably could. Upcycling involves taking discarded materials and repurposing them, which includes transforming jettisoned objects into art. Schatzman and Thrasher have made arrangements with local businesses such as bars to give them their throwaways. (The cousins are also open to accepting suitable discards from individuals who want to donate them.)
“My dad says all the time that one man’s junk is another man’s treasure,” Thrasher said, adding that he is a scrap collector who describes many of his finds as fine art.
It’s a concept that has followed the cousins from Lakeside to their new location in the IngenuityLabs building.
When golf clubs become weapons
Leaving the Lakeside location only proved a temporary setback.
A few months after they shuttered that location in 2024, the cousins were accepted into IngenuityLabs’ incubator, whose members receive such help as marketing and grant-writing workshops. The cousins decided to make Wrecks and Effects the focus of their revamped business because of the popularity of the breaking room at their former location.
Wrecks and Effects, which is open Thursday through Saturday and by appointment, has been able to draw a cross-section of customers. They’ve ranged in age from 12 to 70-plus. Some have come alone, others with divorce parties or to celebrate birthdays and other occasions. The new business opened in September during the three-day IngenuityFest, which is billed as an annual Festival of art, technology, creativity and innovation.
Being part of IngenuityLabs has been good for business. The festival typically draws 20,000 people, hundreds of whom found their way to Wrecks and Effects. The cousins consider the feedback they got during the festival to be invaluable. For example, it helped them determine which were the best breakables to use. They decided to focus more on glass, mirrors and wood frame windows and less on old electronics, such as radios and speakers.
The cousins also discovered which weapons, the implements used for breaking, were best. Customers can now choose from a variety of baseball bats and crowbars.
“We had some golf clubs, but the handles broke off too easily,” Thrasher said.
Golf clubs may not be a match for adult strength, they said. But kids can still use them.
