Earlier this year, we heard quite a bit about some half-baked plans to ban food in the subway. Perhaps it’s a good idea to limit what people can and should be eating in the trains. Perhaps it’ll combat litter and the rodent infestation. Or perhaps it’ll go underenforced with no real impact. Either way, without a food ban, we have Snackman.
Snackman is making the rounds these days. He’s hit the major papers after landing on the front page of Reddit, and he’s even earned some nice words in Jim Dwyer’s “On New York” column. The video that made it all happen is posted above (with some adult language).
The story is a simple one: Charles Sonder, a 24-year-old who’s lived in New York for just a few years, was riding an uptown 6 late at night last month while munching on some chips. A man boarded at Spring St., and apparently an incident ensued. A woman not happy with this man started yelling and kicking, and Sonder, to ease tensions, simply walked between the two of them, all the while eating his snacks. Sonder’s actions have earned him the nickname “Snackman” and the attention of New York’s single ladies.
Dwyer’s take though was the most illuminating. He talks about Sonder’s actions and the way it ended up on YouTube:
Mr. Sonder stepped toward the door, and the battle ebbed for an instant as the man and the woman parted, possibly to let him pass. But he stopped, directly between them. He didn’t say a word, just kept working his way through the Pringles. With Mr. Sonder forming an implacable barrier, the fight dwindled to generally unprintable sputterings, with the woman ordering the man: “Don’t follow me. Do not follow me.”
[Eitan] Noy, having been born and raised in the city, had seen plenty of subway outbursts before, including one on St. Patrick’s Day, when two men set upon a third, pulling open his bag and using some force. Just as Mr. Noy and his friend were discussing intervention, the two men displayed badges and were cuffing the third. “After that, I knew I had to have my phone camera ready,” he said. So on the No. 6 train, he whipped out his camera a few blows into the round, in time to catch some of the action; Mr. Sonder stepping in; and then another woman, with an authoritative voice, ordering the woman to sit down and the man to get off the train.
After that, the remaining combatant noticed Mr. Noy’s cellphone camera and asked if she could see it. “I didn’t know what she was going to do with it,” Mr. Noy said. “She could smash me on the head. I told her, ‘I didn’t really get anything.’ ” She persisted, he deflected, and then he got off at Grand Central Station. Mr. Sonder disappeared into the night and pretty much forgot the whole thing. He went back to his work of building three-dimensional models at an architectural firm.
This is a tale that has everything we love and hate about the subways. There’s a random fight that devolves into violence — something veteran subway riders happen upon far too regularly. There’s a mention of some previously spotted undercover police action (and usually that’s very easy to spot in trains). It has a silent defender doing his duty to break up the fight. And it has food on the subway. Maybe that eating ban isn’t such a great idea after all. I wonder what Snackman would say.
1 comment
A novel and effective approach to conflict resolution. Without engaging and without taking sides, simply place yourself between the two combatants and continue doing whatever it is you were doing. Reading, eating, grooving to your MP3 player. It’s basically saying, “You’re out of line, and if you want to continue, you’re going to have to assault a third innocent party – me – and risk unknown consequences”
I like it.