-Every year at this time, everyone on the eastern
seaboard who knows anything about snowboarding shows up
for the US Open halfpipe.
We're expecting crowds of up to 10,000 people here today.
This thing goes off, it's the biggest snowboard competition
in the world.
SHEM ROOSE: The Opens through the '90s were definitely--
they could get out of control.
JEFF BRUSHIE: People had kegs going on the side of the pipe,
people lined up, drinking and screaming.
SHEM ROOSE: I think one of the top highlights from any of the
Opens was the cage.
Everyone talks about the cage.
JEFF BRUSHIE: Some years, people would bring fencing and
make their own little beer cage that only their crew
could be in.
It was crazy.
TRICIA BYRNES: Pat Bridges, Mark Sullivan, all those guys,
they built this like sketchy chicken wire cage with like
two by fours that was not up to code for sure.
And they pretty much just got wasted all day and cheered on
snowboarding.
It was sick.
PAT BRIDGES: So we get up at 5:00 in the morning.
We go up to the bottom of the pipe and we start dragging
these two by fours and all this chicken wire up there.
Then this guy comes up on a snowmobile--
and this is where I think it's all going to come to an end,
and this guy's like, hey, what are you guys doing?
We're like, oh, we're creating a private viewing area for
Burton employees.
And the guy's like, oh really?
Can I get you anything?
You guys need some trash barrels, some
chairs, some tables?
And we're like, we need all of the above.
TOM MONTEROSSO: And my friends and I had absolutely no idea
what was going on.
We saw that there was a bouncer letting
people in and out.
People were partying in it.
And it was just all out mayhem.
If you walked up the left side of the pipe during the Open,
during the contest, you were probably going to drink like
one or two beers every run.
You were going to stop, say hello to a bunch of locals,
friends, and everybody was partying.
And if you needed a break from that, you would walk up the
right side--
which I never did.
It's a serious event, but at the same time, you're partying
with the crowd and you're partying with the other
competitors.
And yeah, left wall.
JEFF BRUSHIE: But there would be dudes hanging out of the
cage going, Brushie!
Get over here!
Trying to drag you in.
Have a drink.
And you're trying to do your runs.
NEIL KORN: There were so many people in there that the cage
just broke.
And where people were standing on the backside
fell off the halfpipe.
PAT BRIDGES: I was thinking that these 60 people on
chicken wire were going to fly down and
take down 3,000 people.
Didn't happen, thank God.
Nobody got hurt.
I mean, there were some incidents.
CRIS DABICA: Pat's one of the greatest snowboarders in the
world, and Pat did eggplants and his weird handplant
variations in that pipe, trashed,
wearing a tiger costume.
And it's hard enough to walk down the road wearing a tiger
costume drunk.
And he was rolling in from the deck doing
inverts in that costume.
And that's just mind-boggling.
BARRY DUGAN: Those are the moments that you can't script.
People going like, we're going to the Open,
let's fill in the blank.
Let's throw up a cage and get some costumes and bring in
stacks of beer and just go for it.
Why not?
TOM MONTEROSSO: And just to see this whole thing unfold, I
mean, I think it's a really big part as to why I kept
snowboarding because I just wanted to constantly feel that
excited about something.
CRIS DABICA: They just went up and acted like they owned the
place and created this thing.
And nobody asked them to take it down.
That, I think, was one of the higher points of participation
from the crowd standpoint.
It was symbolic of the freedom that you had as a
spectator at the event.
The Open doesn't belong to the sponsors,
doesn't belong to Stratton.
It belongs to the people that have come year after year
after year, those 5,000 people that came between the second
they started doing pipe and the end of
that next decade basically.
TERJE HAAKONSEN: Yeah.
It was hilarious.
People climbing up in trees, snowball fights, a lot of
drinking on the side.
A lot of cheering, a lot of shit-talking.
JEFF BRUSHIE: It was sick.
It was like you wanted to ride to please the crowd there.
You wanted to be up over the crowd looking down and people
going yeah.
ANDY COHGLAN: I think that really ups the level of every
competitor.
And that's kind of the legacy of the US Open started by Jeff
Brushie back in the day, I think, in 1990.
He came onto the scene and just started doing big airs.
DANNY KASS: Brushie was just throwing out the illest crails
and just like boning it out.
And it was just like that vibe of this is snowboarding.
There's no rules.
TERJE HAAKONSEN: I rode with Brushie a lot and also he went
the biggest at the time.
I was really influenced by Craig so I was
just going to like--
my philosophy, if I can be as technical as Craig at the time
and go as big as Brush and Palmer, I
would do pretty good.
ANDY COHGLAN: We didn't see Terje at
the Open as a superstar.
When he came, he was definitely one of the up and
coming groms.
But he didn't roll right in and win.
Took a few years.
-Was there a little bit of a grudge match going on?
You came in second to Terje Haakonsen at the World's at
South Lake Tahoe and today, you squeezed him
by 3/10 of a point.
TODD RICHARDS: The only grudge match between Haakon is
because the blasted me in the face with champagne at the
World's, then he ran away from me and I
couldn't get him back.
No, there's no grudge match there.
The only thing that--
that kid just pushes me, pushes me super hard.
His last run was probably one of the most diverse runs I've
seen him do in a long time, and it's rad to see that.
TERJE HAAKONSEN: All the guys I looked up to, they were
really cool to me.
But I know there was a lot of hate from all other guys and I
could totally feel it.
Jimi Scott was pretty good example.
He was really trying to psych out every newb that came out.
Not only me, but everybody else.
But then you have Palmer and Brushie kind of like helping
you to gain some psychological power against him.
Like Palmer always told me when Jimi drops, you just drop
right after him and go twice as big as him.
He always used to tell me that and Jimi would drop in, and
Palmer would drop, and I would drop.
JAKE BURTON: I think that probably my best Terje moment
at the Open was when I first saw this sticker, the bootleg
sticker that said I saw Terje go fucking
huge at the US Open.
It was great.
Terje really changed the whole thing.
I think he made it more fun and more exciting for
spectators and everybody.
ANDY COHGLAN: He came in and he improved everyone.
And he was one of those riders that everyone started to copy
because not only could he go big, but he was also doing
very technical tricks and really pushed the direction to
where it is today.
DANNY KASS: Because at that time, he was like this god.
We didn't really know much about him.
We just knew that one day, we wanted to be like him.
And we kind of like snuck up from behind and we just
literally just like touched him.
And then he'd turn around, look around.
We'd kind of be like there, like what?
I don't know.
Give him a weird look.
And then he'd turn around again.
Then the next person in the crew would go
up and just be like--
touch.
And then we left, and it was like, that was US Open 1998.
SKY CHALMERS: There's a few photos that really jump out to
me when I think of all the pictures I took at the Open.
One definitely is Terje.
CHRIS COPLEY: We used to do this autograph session in this
courtyard at the Open.
And I mean, it would be mayhem.
There'd be 500, 600 people in this courtyard.
TOM MONTEROSSO: And there's that big kind of clock tower
hotel where all the riders would stay and they would
congregate up on the top floor.
CHRIS COPLEY: And Haakonsen was on like the fifth story.
And he opens up his window and he had his board that he just
won the pipe with.
And he's dangling it out the window.
And he threw the board out the window.
Dude, it was like a riot.
SKY CHALMERS: And then there's a fight.
People were going after the board.
I'm surprised someone didn't get killed.
CHRIS COPLEY: Every cop from down that area was called in
because people were just beating on each other trying
to grab Haakonsen's board.
And that got ugly, and that's where, whew, there were
certain things that--
certain rules got put in place.
BARRY DUGAN: You had this convergence that was pretty
rowdy snowboard-only, not-made-for-TV event.
It was for the snowboarding industry.
And that was pure.
PAT BRIDGES: I mean, it was easy to see what the
importance of the US Open was because it was the Olympics
for freestyle snowboarding before there was an Olympics.
It was the X Games for freestyle snowboarding before
there was an X Games.
And because it really was universal.
You would get everybody of relevance who had a place of
prominence within freestyle snowboarding was there.
TRICIA BYRNES: At that point, you're getting to see like a
bigger international field.
It wasn't on television as much, on the
web, all that stuff.
So people would come out to see these Finnish or crazy
Japanese riders that you'd maybe heard
about but never seen.
And so I feel like there's a lot of firsts at the Open.
-Here he comes in the vert--
huge frontside alley-oop, putting that down smooth.
Just a nice old frontside grind there.
KAZUHIRO KOKUBO: I won two time US Open in
2010 and the 2011.
-[INAUDIBLE] got it going on right now.
Come on, [INAUDIBLE].
-There's the double cork!
Tighten that one down smooth!
It's-- oh!
KAZUHIRO KOKUBO: After that, it's so much better with my
snowboarding.
Yeah, everything is so free.
Yeah, it's so much fun.