Portland, OR, fall of ’93: Snowboarding needs to outgrow neon, world titles and the ski industry. Skateboarding’s influence hasn’t even entered the scene. The stage is set for a surge of raw creativity to shock snowboarding’s culture. Matt Donahue and crew overlook the yet-to-explode city from Mount Tabor. Portland’s book and coffee shops, its punk venues, skate spots, and intellectual hangouts stretch west toward the coast and east toward Mt. Hood. Donahue and The Movement’s other two riders, Dan Peterka and Mark Hibdon, walk across the leafy ground. The late Chris Brunkhart opens the shutter of his Leica, framing only their feet, in black and white. A blitzkrieg of full-volume artistic creation would follow, called The Movement. It was a burst of expression in snowboarding, which evolved, inspired and disintegrated.

“We answered the call of an anti-commercialist approach to a sport that needed some soul injected into it desperately,” Donahue says. “We just wanted to give the sport some fuckin’ soul.” 

Donahue grew up snowboarding Mt. Hood, attending nearby Sandy High School, and was already a top rider. He could also paint and draw, play music, skate halfpipes, speak functional French and Spanish, and shoot a basketball, all with ability and style. “He’s the Northwest’s best-kept secret,” former Ride Snowboards pro Russell Winfield says. “Donahue was super-innovative, the understated Jamie Lynn. Not for lack of talent, just for being more underground.”… 

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