Columnist Susan Snyder: Selections aren’t our best work

Tuesday, April 12, 2005 | 8:12 a.m.

The choices we have available say almost as much about our society as the choices we make.

The thought struck me Sunday as I stood before a refrigerated case in the grocery store staring at an entire wall of orange-juice cartons.

Fresh or from concentrate. With or without calcium. Lots of pulp, medium pulp, low pulp, no pulp. Name-brand or store-brand. Used to be only pantyhose were this complicated.

Also in the store was a group of foreign tourists that emerged from a bus parked outside. Wonder what they thought of Americans and the effort we make to take home a half-gallon of orange juice.

Our choices tell a lot about us. And we can only imagine what others could glean about us from the annual "best of" roundups promoted by various publications.

Las Vegas Weekly's Reader's Choice Awards rely on readers. No editors or advertising departments are at work here. We are to blame if we look like buffoons.

And, we do.

Starbucks was voted Best Cup of Coffee.

Maybe it is. More likely, it won because you can't cross an intersection, go into a grocery store or walk through the airport without seeing one of these java outlets that sells glassware, CDs, stuffed animals, goopy drinks with syrup and whipped cream and -- occasionally -- an actual cup of coffee.

Even Costco sells Starbucks coffee (in 2-pound bags, like the ones we buy for our house, because it's our favorite ...).

For Best Local Hero, we chose Las Vegas Mayor Oscar Goodman.

(Well, there was no category for Best Elementary School Guest Speaker.)

What's On magazine readers chose the Manhattan Express at New York, New York as Best Thrill Ride. This says that locals know better than to go to the top of the Stratosphere. (The Las Vegas Monorail should have been a contender, with its impromptu shedding. Maybe it wasn't running at voting time.)

We can hide behind only-in-Las-Vegas categories such as Best Wedding Chapel, Best Elvis and Best Female Impersonator.

But we cannot run from who we truly are when we choose Olive Garden as Best Italian Restaurant ("Best of Las Vegas 2005" sponsored by Newspaper X). And we've chosen it more than once.

Well, their readers have, anyway.

Cripes, people. Buy the breadsticks at Albertsons and pop them into the oven while you make "reservations" at a place where you order salad a la carte. (That's foreign for "doesn't come with your spaghetti.")

Now, Las Vegas Life didn't ask us to choose -- thankfully. It sought advice from longtime residents and other experts to come up with such awards as Best Place to Get Away From Las Vegas: UNLV's Lied Library.

It is a great library -- smack-dab in the middle of Las Vegas. You're not really getting away from anything, except a place to park. Try doing it without a permit. And, try finding a permit.

As I walked out of the store Sunday with my complicated carton of juice, I watched a handful of the tourists stop to look at my car as they walked back to their bus. They were reading the bumper stickers.

God only knows what those say about us.