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'Snackman' Who Stopped Subway Fight Now Has His Own Bat-Symbol

By Andrea Swalec | April 11, 2012 9:52am
Snackman Charles Sonder works as a designer at a Lower East Side architecture firm by day, he said in his office April 10, 2012.
Snackman Charles Sonder works as a designer at a Lower East Side architecture firm by day, he said in his office April 10, 2012.
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DNAinfo/Andrea Swalec

WARNING: Video contains explicit language and violence.

LOWER EAST SIDE — Mild-mannered designer by day, "Snackman" by night. 

The man who was caught on cell phone video thwarting a fight on the subway without missing a bite of his in-transit treat said he's amazed footage of the incident went viral, he told DNAinfo Tuesday night. 

Like any good superhero, Charles Sonder — who the Internet dubbed "Snackman" — said he now has his own signal to beam over the city: a Bat-Symbol-like projection of the mustachioed man on Pringles can. 

"He's the hero New York deserves, but not the one it needs right now," text at the bottom of the graphic Sonder said his friend Fahim Saleh posted to Facebook reads.

"So we'll hunt him because he can take it. Because he's not our hero, he's a silent guardian, a watchful protector, a Snackman." 

Sonder, 24, said he boarded an uptown 6 train at Spring Street around 9 p.m. "two or three Thursdays ago," heading from Home Sweet Home Bar on Chrystie Street to a bar in Midtown with his coworkers when a man and a woman began to kick and scream at each other. 

"That's when I stepped between them and just stood there," said Sonder, who was eating cheddar Pringles and a bag of Gummi bears at the time. "I didn't think of anything else to do." 

Sonder, a 6-foot-tall Rhode Island native, said the fighters seemed to know each other. 

"I didn't want them to accidentally hit anyone on the train," he said. 

What the video doesn't show is that the male combatant got off the train, Sonder said.

Sonder, who lives in Fort Greene and has been in New York for two years, found out video of the incident — which had been viewed more than 555,000 times by Wednesday morning — had gone viral when he received a text message Tuesday morning from his mother.

"Hey, Snackman," the sheepish superhero said she wrote. 

"My Facebook was just blowing up this morning," he said Tuesday night.

Snackman, who said Fritos and Oreos are some of his favorite snacks, was dismayed by the attention he has gotten. 

"I'd like to be known for other things," he said, "but it's pretty funny."