BRYAN IGUCHI | POWDER & RAILS | VICE | PT 2/4

BRYAN IGUCHI: I guess I could say an average person could
definitely become a good snowboarder, good enough to
have a great time on the mountains.
It's worth it.
It's fun.
MALE SPEAKER: Because it could take up to a
month to become a pro.
BRYAN IGUCHI: Oh, at least.
BRYAN FOX: He's legendary everywhere, but down there, he
was that type of thing, where, like, The Guch
is like from here.
There's not a lot of people who are from Southern
California and really made any sort of impact on snowboarding
in general.
I don't know, I'd say Guch is like the most influential
Southern California snowboarder.
That'd be my personal opinion.
PAT BRIDGES: Guch was a sponsored skateboarder.
I think he was skating for Epic Skateboards,
something like that.
So even before he got into snowboarding, he knew he was a
skater, which was cool.
BRYAN IGUCHI: I was 13 years old and I got sponsored by
Epic Skateboards out of Northern California.
I actually got my skate shot in TransWorld, Spike Jonze
shot it, and I was doing a feeble grind on a flat bar, in
'89, I think it was.
So the skateboarding thing was always--
I was trying and I was trying to go, I was trying to go pro
doing it, but then I started snowboarding at the same time
and just kind of shifted from skateboarding to snowboarding.
KEVIN JONES: When I started snowboarding, I really thought
it was gay.
I mean, and gay in the true sense of the word.
I was like, whoa, there's other people out there like
me, they skateboard and they snowboard.
Like, wow, this is cool.
Maybe it's not as gay as I thought it was.
Then you saw the trendsetters, you saw all these guys.
Guch especially, this little short guy
with these huge jeans.
And then the irony was after a day of shredding they'd get
wet and the sun would go down, and you'd be riding in them
and they'd turn into these big bells, these frozen bells, and
your leg would just be like in this thing.
It was the worst, coldest trend in snowboarding to date.
But yeah, that era was just funny.
But it was like, it was the whole attitude of the
snowboarders and skateboarders back then.
It was like rebellious.
And everybody made fun of you 'cause you wore big jeans, but
you're like, yeah, that's right.
You don't understand, man.
You don't understand what I'm doing with these jeans.
I met Guch, just kind of signed up with Burton.
And he was riding in big, baggy jeans.
He had a small bong in his pocket.
He had super long hair.
He was from SoCal, and he loves his chips and salsa.
And he introduced me to a few things.
KEVIN JONES: Guch kind of has this lure to him, this ninja,
Japanese, mystical--
mystical Guch.
And there's a shot of him, it's all back-lit, and there's
just a huge pony coming off.
You know, the soul--
I'm hardcore, I listen to punk rock music, I skateboard.
But I'm also very soulful.
He's just looking off into the distance like, you don't even
know what I'm looking at right now.
What I'm looking at is totally heavy.
And you have no idea.

Freaking awesome.
BRYAN IGUCHI: I guess, yeah.
Well, I did a semester at junior college, and once I got
out, I moved up to Big Bear.
And that was kind of the beginning of snowboard parks.
That was the first time that a mountain had given full
permission to just build jumps and build these features.
And no one really knew how--
we didn't really know at the time how big to build them or
what really kind of features.
So we started experimenting.
And the technical aspect of it was just accelerating.
It was like, we built this skate park where it was kind
of bold corners and banked slalom runs, and then gaps,
and we put up rails, and everything.
And the riders around, it just seemed like every day, there
was some new trick going on.
There was a really intense amount of progression
happening in that park.
DAVE DOWNING: Bear Mountain was the only
real snowboard park.
They're building jumps and Mike Parillo was digging this
half-pipe with a chainsaw.
It was pretty raw back then.
And Bryan was definitely the innovator of
the whole group there.
He started doing those like shifty backside 180s off these
hips and stuff.
And I remember just everybody trying to do shifty backside
180s like Bryan Iguchi did.
There was this one rainbow rail that's pretty famous.
And it was like a piece of a chair lift tower.
It was just laying in some scrap pile, and Parillo like
drug it out and stuck it in the snow.
That was one of the first metal rails
in a snowboard park.
And Bryan used to just kill all that stuff.
BRYAN IGUCHI: The word got out, and then people from all
over the place were coming down.
There was people from the Northwest and East Coast and
people from Europe.
And this snowboard park just caught on and pretty much
changed the way people were snowboarding.
It really blew up and created the X-Games.
It just kind of creates this environment where snowboarding
could really progress on a level where there was a lot of
spectators and events and things.
Seemed like just a lot of things were
happening at that time.
TERJE HAAKONSEN: He would always do something amazing on
the board, he was the guy who could do a lot of a little.
Guch was really into spinning and all the little
jib things, you know?
He was a really good skateboarder.
Still is.
So it was a lot of jib bunks and a lot of
tail and nose maneuvers.
BILLY ANDERSON: I guess like one of his influential things
too were just all the nose-butter stuff.
That was like one of his deals, was just spinning
around from his tip to his tail and ollying, and bouncing
around with one foot.
That was all stuff that no one had really done.
BRYAN IGUCHI: It was probably two months after I moved to
Big Bear, there was a big pipe contest at Snow Summit.
And I was living in my Jeep and whatever.
And I really wanted to do this contest.
I got started riding a bunch and felt like maybe I could go
pro or whatever.
That's what I wanted to do.
It was the first pro contest I entered.
And halfway down my first run, my binding broke and I didn't
qualify for the event.
And I was so bummed, wasted that money.
I don't even know what I was thinking.
I was just pissed.
And next day, went out and I was just riding, riding the
pipe at Bear Mountain and just doing my thing, just
sessioning with a couple friends.
It was a nice day and the pipe was good.
So I was having a good session.
Went to take a break to grab some water, and Tim Pogue was
the team manager of Burton Snowboards.
And he was there with some of the team and had seen me ride
during the practice for the contest and that morning.
And he approached me and gave me his business card, and
said, give me a call in two weeks.
I'll be back in the office.
And I'd love to help you out.
BILLY ANDERSON: It's kind of crazy, because when I think
about it, I don't think of him as really a progressive pipe
rider for the time.
But then when you start talking about it, he was one
of the ones that was really pushing it at those times.
The early-- and I think it's in A Lively Ride-- he does a
Cab 9 in the pipe and a bunch of switch stuff,
and a ton of spinning.
I think he was one of the first ones to really kind of
take that up.
And I think Hard, the Hungry, and the Homeless, I think he
was doing some 900s.
PAT BRIDGES: But he was also--
in A Lively Ride, he was doing alley-oop McTwists and tail
grabs on this quarter pipe that couldn't have been more
than six feet wide and 10 feet tall.
It was really, really impressive to see.
I mean, here's a guy who was buttering, he was trying to
huff 1080s, nines, off of everything.
And he was ruined on McTwists and stuff like that.
It was sick.
DAVE DOWNING: That's when he was filming The Hard, the
Hungry and the Homeless.
And then after that, Burton brought Bryan and helped him--
Bryan helped Burton develop the Twin, which was that
question mark Ouija Twin that was pretty famous.
I think it was early enough in snowboarding that there was a
big change happening.
It was kind of one of those things where, well, here, go
travel with Mack Dawg and go film.
And then go to these contests.
So we filmed between the contests and kind of just
road-tripped.
I just jumped in the car and then we drove
from event to event.
But it was more of the filming, we'd go out and film,
hook up with locals in different
places and go film stuff.
And the project turned out to be The Hard, the Hungry, and
the Homeless.
That was the first snowboard film I worked on.
That was where my career kind of shifted to, was more the
filming stuff.
It was just kind of, that was gaining in popularity more
than the events.
The events were, I'd say, pretty well dominated by Terje
and everyone.
And it was just more of a--
I don't know, it just seemed like it was a better
opportunity for me.
PAT BRIDGES: Guchie seemed like he
just came out of nowhere.
And it's interesting, because all the other riders, they
kind of still had to do contests and stuff, with the
exception of Damian and those guys.
But he was the first pure freestyler who actually just
seemed like, first he did movies, then he did contests.
BRYAN IGUCHI: I've never had the best
luck with the contests.

I end up feeling frustrated a lot at contests.
It's just one of those things.
I don't think competition's easy.
I remember Seoane--
Dave Seoane came up to me at the ASO show in San Diego, and
he said he had this concept for this snowboard movie.
We're gonna all jump in these Cadillacs and drive around,
road-trip around the States, and make a snowboard movie.
You know, I'm like, that sounds awesome.
Who's gonna go?
He's like, I got Terje, and Ranquet, John Cardiel.
I was like, done.
Let's do this.
We'd go shred all these spots, but then we'd go skate as
much, if not more.
And it was on that trip, I remember skating Burnside with
them, and some mini-ramps in Colorado.
And just everywhere we went, there was--
we'd hook up with the skaters or we'd hook up with the
snowboarders or whatever.
And it was a really cool time.
DAVE DOWNING: He basically took off with Dave Seoane
during the Roadkill filming sessions.
He was gone for a couple months.
I didn't even know what was going on until that movie came
out, and then I was like, whoa, Bryan was doing that?
That's pretty sick.
PAT BRIDGES: Then you saw him in the Volcom movies.
A Lively Ride was the first Volcom film I saw him in, and
then obviously he had a lot of clips in The Garden.
BRYAN IGUCHI: Throughout the process of making it, we just
kind of went out--
OK, we're doing Volcom snow project.
And Wooly, the owner, he'd be out in the field with us in
the back country hiking, filming the
Super-8, and Troy Eckert--
it kinda all came together at Sonora Pass in California.
And that's where we came up with the name The Garden.
We would go up there, we'd camp and we'd just hike these
jumps, and we'd have these amazing sessions where it
would be exhausting long days, hiking around and just so
having a blast, and sitting around the campfire at night,
telling stories and laughing and partying and just
having a good time.
And that's when we were like, this is the Butterfly Garden.
This is The Garden.
And this is the movie.
This movie's about this.
This is what snowboarding is about, is hanging out with
your friends and going out and finding these
places that are special.
It was really kind of a liberating experience for all
of us, to be able to get out from the ski resort and from
the crowds and from the crazy park scene
that was blowing up.
I mean, making The Garden was probably still, to this day,
the highlight of my snowboarding career.
It kind of got me inspired to continue the search and
explore and recreate that kind of feeling.
And I've been trying to keep that dream alive by riding.