For some, a Saturday night out on the town means a nice meal and a movie, for others, it might mean picking up an ax and slinging it toward a target.

People have been throwing axes for sport for thousands of years, but the modern concept of a venue specifically dedicated to regulated ax throwing started in 2010, when Matt Wilson founded Backyard Axe Throwing League in Toronto after years of organizing it in his backyard, writes Matthew Rothstein for biznow.com.

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BATL had grown a following when Matt and Krista Paton visited in 2015, fell in love and co-founded Urban Axes in Philadelphia with partners Stu Jones and Shaun Hurley the following year. For their first location, the founding quartet settled upon a former warehouse in the post-industrial neighborhood of Kensington — close to buzzy Fishtown, but cheap enough for a new company selling something no one had heard of. Matt Paton told Bisnow that when Jones described his vision for the space to the warehouse’s owners, one of them laughed and walked out of the building immediately.

The other listened intently. At that point, the only place offering ax-throwing in the U.S. was Stumpy’s Hatchet House in New Jersey, which had just opened in early 2016 and was a casual gathering place around a theme, according to Paton. Urban Axes owners certainly wanted to provide that, but they also wanted a place where the competition can become the focus, like the ongoing league the founders saw at BATL.

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