A shot at fame: boozy balancing act proves that in Dubai, no world record is too obscure to pursue

The 6,148 whiskey shots perched atop glasses of energy drink waited for the push that might send them tumbling into the record books — just another night in Dubai, and another chance to make a certain kind of history.

Superlatives like “the world’s biggest” and “the world’s first” are almost as ubiquitous as the skyscrapers and mega-projects that have come to define this city-state on the Arabian Peninsula, home to the tallest building and the busiest international airport on Earth.

With time, this largest-in-life approach has filtered down to more humble and odder pursuits — such as Monday night’s attempt at the world’s longest domino drop shot.

You probably weren’t aware that there was a record to beat in the domino drop shot, or even that there was something called a domino drop shot. Just imagine someone dropping a shot glass into a beer, but before you can guzzle it down, another thousand shots drop into another thousand pints behind it, like dominoes.

The current record holder for the longest drop is the Bahama-based location of the alcohol-soaked chain Señor Frog, which got 4,107 of its 4,109 shot glasses to fall correctly in February 2013.

On Monday, The Huddle Sports Bar & Grill in Bur Dubai sought to break the record. Staffers carefully set up over 6,000 glasses of Camros whiskey and Bazooka energy drink. It was an effort five months in the making, with tests twice a month that took 12 hours to set up.