Green’s Dictionary of Slang

(US) a police officer.

1930		J.A. Russell ‘Colgate University Sl.’ in AS V:3 239: Side-walk snail: policeman. ‘Avoid the side-walk snail.’.
1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn).

(Aus.) a street-walker.

1931

New Call (Perth, WA) 17 Dec. 1/3: [I]t was nothing to see a side-walk sister spend £5 every night on the drug, which usually represented about one-third of their night’s takings for soliciting.

(US) anyone, other than those employed at the site, who enjoys standing staring at buildings under construction; also attrib.

1938		St Louis Post-Dispatch (MO) 14 Nov. 1/2: Watching Own Building Excavation [...] John D. Rockefeller Jr., founder of the Sidewalk Superintendent Club — New York’s first organization of steam-shovel kibitzers .
1939		V. Hiscock et al. Ways to Community Health Education 109: This is a sound exhibit idea for people like to watch others work. Who is there among us who isn’t a sidewalk superintendent at heart?
1948		G.H. Bean Yankee Auctioneer 192: Many times I have lowered furniture from upper floors by a trick I learned when acting as a ‘sidewalk superintendent’.
1957		Carpenter LXXVI–VII 29: Arranged around the fence at eye level were several foot-square, wire-covered peepholes, each one engaged by an engrossed sidewalk superintendent.
1964		E. Wilson Earl Wilson’s N.Y. 288: It was the natives of New York who invented and popularized the ‘sidewalk superintendents’ pastime.
1976		Greendale & Knock Housing Costs and Housing Needs 112: Being a sidewalk superintendent can be fun, as long as you do not move from the sidewalk into the construction site.
1986		N.Y. Mag. 24 Feb. 22: But the ‘sidewalk superintendent’ portholes that once allowed pedestrians to watch their city grow up are vanishing.
1998		Press Sun-Bulletin (Binghamton, NY) 5 May 1/3: Dozens of ‘sidewalk superintendents’ stood in the drizzle to watch.

(US) a skate-boarder.

1964		Pittsburgh Press (PA) 6 Sept. 3/3: An outbreak of sidewalk surfing [...] There is even a song, ‘Sidewalk Surfers,’ soon to be released.
1977		Anderson Herald (IN) 31 July 29/1: [headline] Sidewalk Surfers Give Sport a New Twist.
1987		L.A. Times 18 Nov. 53/3: Where sidewalk surfers once had their way only shoppers remain.
1991		Tampa Trib. (FL) 18 Aug. 15/3: The unbridled joy he and other sidewalk surfers [...] derive from cruising the pavement.
1999		(ref. to 1959) L.A. Times Magazine 13 June 15/2: Using woopd scraps and thrift-store roller skates Skip Engloom, hen 12, makes and sells boards for ‘sidewalk surfers’ [1959].
2000		Jason Borte ‘Skateboarding’ at Surfline.com 🌐 Initially known as sidewalk surfing, skateboarding came about soon after Gidget introduced surf culture to the masses in 1959. [...] In fact, today’s sidewalk surfers are still waiting for surfing to catch up.
2007		Great falls Trib. (MT) 9 July 19/1: Here’s a look at what it takes to be a ‘ssidewalk surfer’.

(US) skate-boarding.

1964		see sidewalk surfer
1987		L.A. Times 18 Nov. 53/3: Police say they will monitor the street during peak sidewalk-surfing hours.
2000		Jason Borte ‘Skateboarding’ at Surfline.com 🌐 Initially known as sidewalk surfing, skateboarding came about soon after Gidget introduced surf culture to the masses in 1959. [...].

(US) a drunkard.

1926

Maines & Grant Wise-crack Dict.

a prostitute.

1949		Monteleone Criminal Sl. (rev. edn) 202: sidewalk susie (n) A prostitute; a whore.
1989		H. Rawson Dict. of Invective (1991) 14: The insulting connotations usually come through most clearly when the familiar form of a name is used, as in [...] suzie (commonly a prostitute, and for emphasis, sidewalk suzie).

(US) to walk the streets searching for a job.

1993

I.L. Allen City in Sl. (1995) 40: To hit the sidewalks and to pound the pavement especially have meant looking for a job.

see pound the pavement under pound v.²

(US) used jokingly, of shops and entertainments in (small, provincial) towns or cities, to close down at nightfall.

1915		Buffalo Courier (NY) 9 Apr. 10/1: [T]he ball players were allowed to mingle with the throng where [...] ‘They don’t roll up the sidewalks at night’.
1922		Forest Park Review (IL) 11 Nov. 8/3: Everything is about the same [...] except that they roll up the sidewalks at 10 o’clock now instead of 9 p.m.
1934		W.R. Burnett Goodbye to the Past 195: But in Alkali they didn’t take in the sidewalks on Sunday afternoons!
1993		(ref. to mid–19C) I.L. Allen City in Sl. (1995) 57: Cities long ago ceased to roll up the sidewalks at sunset.
1987		H. Ward q. in Firestone Swing, Swing, Swing (1993) 125: ‘I constantly had to worry about where I was going to get my dress pressed when we finally reached wherever we were going because they usually rolled up the sidewalks by seven o’clock’.

see sidewalk superintendent