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Four-panel full-color bar comic. Panel 1: a long West Loop bar lined with tiny yellow-green shot glasses. Panel 2: a Guinness World Records stamp, 1,969 simultaneous Malört shots. Panel 3: cartoon patrons with lemon-pucker faces. Panel 4: a donation jar labeled Ravenswood Community Services, caption bad decision for a good cause.
Four panels: a long bar of tiny glasses, a 1,969 Guinness stamp, cartoon faces after the wormwood hit, and a charity jar for Ravenswood Community Services. Bad decision, good cause. · Comic: Topics / Drew’s Comic Newsroom. Source: UPI Odd News, Sept. 1, 2026.

Humor · SATIRE

Chicago sets a Guinness record: 1,969 Malört shots at once

What happened

UPI Odd News, dated 1 September 2026, reports that Recess, a bar in Chicago’s West Loop, lined up 1,969 people for simultaneous shots of Jeppson’s Malört and put the count in the Guinness book. The house line, printed with the stunt, is a bad decision for a good cause. Proceeds went to Ravenswood Community Services. Malört is a wormwood Swedish-style schnapps that has been bottled in Chicago since the 1930s and has a reputation as a dare more than a cocktail. This desk is filing the number, the bar, the charity, and the face people make. It is not filing any public official who may have been in the room, and it is not turning a shot-record into a civic speech.

A world record for doing something unpleasant together is a classic odd-news shape. The strip is a mile of tiny glasses, a stamp with 1,969 on it, cartoon puckers, and a jar. Color on the yellow-green liquor, the bar wood, the faces, the donation tin. White gutters. Nobody in the panels is a real person. Guinness records of this type are logistics more than mixology: same liquid, same moment, enough bodies, an official count. Recess handled the line. Ravenswood Community Services is the named beneficiary. The wormwood note is history, not a tasting guide and not a health claim.

The number is the joke’s spine. 1,969 simultaneous shots is a crowd, a pour, and a stopwatch. UPI’s odd-news desk treated it as a Chicago handshake that got numbered. This recap treats it the same way. Humor here is a bright, specific gag with a source URL, not a roast of anyone’s job and not a list of who showed up. Skip the civic cameos. Keep the glasses, the stamp, the faces, and the jar.

Why it matters

A city that has treated Malört as a welcome-to-Chicago dare just turned the handshake into a numbered stunt and sent the money to a food-and-services nonprofit. That is the whole package. Readers get the 1,969, the West Loop bar, the Guinness card, and the Ravenswood jar. They do not get a lecture on amaro, a ranking of bitter liqueurs, or a cameo from anyone’s campaign. The caption already said it: bad decision for a good cause.

Odd news is a beat because it is dated and countable. Tuesday’s count is 1,969. Tuesday’s bar is Recess. Tuesday’s cause is Ravenswood Community Services. Those three facts are enough to draw four panels and write five paragraphs without padding the room with famous extras.

Conclusion

Recess in the West Loop put 1,969 Malört shots in the air at once, Guinness signed the card, Ravenswood Community Services got the cause. Bad decision, good cause. Yellow-green glasses, pucker faces, donation jar. Source: https://www.upi.com/Odd_News/2026/09/01/Guinness-World-Records-Jeppsons-Malort/9561788278812/

Source: UPI