A Visit to the Rage Room

My fingertips felt tingly as I walked into Lake City’s Rage Industry over the weekend. Vases, mugs, terra-cotta pots, candlestick holders, and empty bottles of Tsingtao beer and Charles Shaw wine lined the walls of the unassuming-looking building. On the opposite side of the storefront, a sign reading “Smash me :)” was taped onto a rack of dusty printers and computer monitors.

Leslie Nguyen, who opened Rage Industry in April, greeted me and my boyfriend with two milk crates full of bottles and glass tchotchkes she’d picked out for us. The concept for her business was inspired by a scene from Zombieland in which survivors of the zombie apocalypse wreak havoc in an abandoned gift shop.

“I thought, ‘It would be nice to smash things without any consequences,'” she told us as we suited up into gauzy coveralls, plastic face shields, and gardening gloves before heading to our final destination: the rage room.

(Read on at The Stranger)