I like 'em both. I don’t give a #$(* that people seem to think sweet bagels are an abomination… a cranberry bagel, double-toasted, with a generous amount honey nut cream cheese is delicious!
Savory, like salt or everything.
Ocassionally a cinnamon raisin might be okay.
Generally speaking, I am a Bagel Traditionalist, and shudder at the Wonder Bread-textured 4WD-tire-sized abominations one usually encounters these days …
But the U.S. supermarket chain Wegman’s makes a “Marco Polo” bagel with Japanese rice flour … heaven, particularly lined with treyf cold cuts such as ham!!
I could see that…I love hearty rye bread with butter and jam. The rye against the jam is a very nice contrast.
And like Lynn, I like a schmear of cream cheese with a slice of smoked ham.
Mmmm. Hungry now.
Garlic, please, with TempTee cream cheese and some fresh lox. Want to go back up to NJ just to go to Goldberg’s in Westwood to get one…
Panera (or St. Louis Bread Company) has a cranberry bagel during October – their Pink Ribbon Bagel – that I would gladly eat three times a day for the entire month. Everything bagels are okay once in a while, but my stomach rebels.
When I go on one of my periodic bagel binges it is always an onion or garlic bagel, toasted then spread with a little butter and then cream cheese. Sprinkled with a little salt and it’s perfect for me. Sometimes I mix some garlic powder into the cream cheese or the butter.
I like savory better, and I agree with silenus that a good jalepeno bagel can put a nice burn in your belly.
My favorite “sweet” bagel is banana-nut (with some sweet walnut cream cheese), but I have a hard time finding them around here.
Savory. Or possibly neutral bagel with honey-nut cream cheese on it.
My favorites are everything, onion, or garlic. Pumpernickel with bacon-scallion cream cheese is divine, too. (I know, pork-infused dairy on a bagel - live with it.)
Cinnamon-raisin bagels seem reasonable if not tempting to me, but the crazy sweet flavors I see at Panera? Chocolate chip bagels are an abomination.
Given the choice of only one, I’d pick savory. Garlic bagels are a wonder and delight, for sure.
That said, there’s a time and a place for a sweet bagel. Panera, for instance, has a surprisingly delicious chocolate chip bagel.
I definitely prefer savory. A poppy seed bagel with plain cream cheese is all I need.
But if given the choice between a sweet bagel (like blueberry or cinnamon & raisin) or a donut, I’m still taking the bagel. Donuts are disgusting.
Sweet bagels? Child’s play!
You need a Fragel. Deep fried cinnamon raisin bagel, covered in sugar.
(I never get them, but the real bagels there are good, if you’re in town.
Hell, it’s an insult to lousy bagels and lousy doughnuts, too. To have one resemble the other in any way other than being round, they’d have to be almost supernaturally bad.
I had an odd bread-related experience yesterday. I frequent our local food pantry, and as food pantries go, I think you’d be hard-pressed to find a better one. So yesterday I got an enormous handmade loaf of bread–the local bakeries donate a lot of day-old, premium, artisan breads. It seriously is the biggest loaf I’ve ever seen. I couldn’t tell what kind it was, but it smelled sweet and looked like it had a cinnamon-sugar type topping, so I figured the kids would like it with peanut butter and honey.
When I got home I cut a big chunk of it to try. Sure enough, the top crust was slathered with nice crunchy cinnamon sugar stuff…but the bread itself was a gorgeous, savory, sundried tomato/garlic/etc type bread! Apparently someone got mixed up when they went to top the breads…and the food bank got the benefit of the odd loaves. 
The dogs are enjoying the top crust and the rest of us love the sundried tomato innards.
It probably addresses a need that used to be filled by the donut, which used to be widely available but has lost a lot of its class and market.
But bagels are really a cultural item. The traditional varieties represent ethnic and regional tastes, which add up to the kind of character donuts, as a genre, can never have (although individual varieties of donut certainly can).
It’s kind of like calling any old funnel-shaped cocktail a martini.