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The Domino Shot Record Attempt Story
Larry got the idea for this bar trick by
watching a TV show on Food Network.
They filmed that particular segment at a bar
in Europe.
The bartender did a Jager Bomb Domino Shot bar
trick consisting of a line of 16 pint glasses half full of Red Bull side by side
then balancing a shot glass full of Jager on top of the space between each the
pint glasses. He gave a push to the first shot glass knocking it into the second
pint glass setting off a chain reaction where each shot glass of Jager dropped
into a pint glass of Red Bull.
“I can
do that trick!”
Larry thought.
His first try was to duplicate the trick and
improve on the artistic merit by setting the bar on fire with a liqueur just
prior to setting off the chain reaction.
The splash extinguished the fire down the line.
See this trick.
Click here.
While it worked flawlessly, and was mildly
amusing, it was not very impressive, nor challenging.
Larry got the idea that he could run a train of
domino shots the entire length of the bar if he could figure out a way to cross
the service bar area between the north end of the bar and the south end of the
bar.
This part of the trick has become referred to as the
“bridge”.
Different bridges were tried with designs coming from
Larry, our customers, and our staff.
Most were too complicated, too difficult to set
up, or were not reliable.
Even before he settled on the final design for
the bridge, which came from our ace bar back Randy, it was decided that simply
running the length of the bar was not going to be challenging enough.
A second trick was needed to get the domino
effect across the open area of the bar back across to the other side of the bar.
That part of the trick has become referred to as the “transition”.
The idea was to drop the domino shots up the
bar in the other direction, going back across the bridge a second time.
It was at that point that Larry began thinking
about a record setting performance.
One of our guys that works in back, Wonsley,
pointed out that “you need to go big, or go home.”
We suffered many failures along the way but
some of them are amusing to watch.
We learned something new with every attempt.
Here are two practice runs using water that
shows the designs of the bridge and the transition.
Attempt One
shows a different bridge than was used during
the Event on August 26th.
Attempt Two shows an almost full scale
practice run that did not go as planned.
Vibrations on the bar from the shots dropping
going north set off the shots near the bridge going south.
That was the last time the trick was practiced.
He thought the answer to the vibration problem
was to widen the separation between the northbound dominos and the southbound
dominos.
He was not concerned about the bridge in either
direction.
Randy’s design worked every time.
The transition was another matter.
It relied on the last northbound shot dropping
to cause the cue ball to launch and roll across the transition striking the
first pint glass on the southbound
side hard enough to continue the southbound
chain reaction.
Sometimes it worked and sometimes it didn’t.
August 26th
Our event was graciously sponsored by
Jagermeister and Red Bull.
We began setting up and staging the glassware
mid-afternoon. WPTV Channel 5 in West Palm Beach was filming the event for the
11:00 news to be aired as their closing segment of the broadcast.
They wanted Larry to run the trick at 8:45 to
give them time to get back to the studio and work up the story.
This is what the set up looked like.
Click here.
If Larry told anyone he was not nervous he was
lying through his teeth.
He has not been that nervous since opening
night way back in January.
The set up took longer than anticipated.
We had to make last minute changes to a few of
the pint glasses to insure that the shot glasses on top were uniform in height.
He was rushed near the end in order to make
sure we did not miss the Channel 5 newscast deadline.
We were attempting to set a record.
No record has ever been established for
Florida.
As far as we were able to determine, the world record
for this trick is close to 1,100 Jager Bomb Domino Shots.
I have seen that video and they had several
glitches during the event.
I wonder who drank all those shots?
There didn’t appear to be many spectators.
Larry’s attempt to establish the record for
Florida consisted of 253 shots.
In case you are wondering where that number
came from it is simple.
That was all the pint glasses we could fit on
the bar for the configuration Larry decided to use to do the trick.
The domino train ran from the south end of the
bar across the bridge to the north end of the bar, then across the transition,
ending up back near the mid point of the north bar where it was to cross the
bridge again on its way back to where it started.
To say that it was impressive looking is an
understatement.
I apologize in advance for the shakiness of the
video that I made.
I was probably even more nervous than Larry.
I couldn’t help thinking of all the things that
could possibly go wrong.
Pirate’s Well webmaster‘s video of the event.
The video of the raw feed made by Jay Cashmere of WPTV
is
here.
The news story as it appeared during the 11:00
news on Channel 5 is
here.
If you have not looked at the videos yet I will
take the drama out of the story for you.
It went flawlessly from start to finish
including both bridge crossings and the transition.
It appears in the video that Larry gave a push
to the shot glass at the end of the transition, but what happened was he wasn’t
sure if the que ball was rolling fast enough to knock down the first shot going
north.
Because he was nervous he planned to assist the
que ball striking the pint glass if needed. He didn’t want a momentary
delay in the knockdown.
He said that just as he reached to push the
shot glass it fell, continuing the chain reaction all the way to the end.
Watch the reaction of the crowd.
It was truly an incredible experience.
I’m am a very proud dad.
We wish to thank all of the people that helped
make this happen.
Jagermeister and Red Bull both donated the
ingredients.
The Jagerettes were on hand to give away tons
of stuff.
Thanks to Jay Cashmere of WPTV channel 5 for being
interested in this event and filming it for their news broadcast.
Thanks to our Pirate’s Well friends for
supporting everything we do for you.
You are awesome!
If you were there and you took photos or
videos, please share them with us.
Send them to your humble
Pirate’s Well Webmaster
please!
We would love to share them.
Respectfully submitted,
Larry Sr.