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Always the street. The only places I take the sidewalk are:

* There was one spot on a route that I used to take that it was easier to: cut across the opposing lane of traffic, get on the sidewalk mid-block, and cross the intersection in the cross walk and then head east (I was heading south up to that point), rather than wait in a row of cars for a gap in opposing traffic so I could turn left. There isn't a turn lane there, and there's always a lot of traffic going the other way, so I'd have to wait several light cycles to make it up to the front and then inevitably was turning from the middle of the intersection as the light turned red and one last car raced through from the other direction. Awful. I chose to take the sidewalk for half a block instead, but have finally settled on different routes now.

* Also on the same route, there'd almost always be a long traffic jam on a one way multi-lane street and sometimes the cars would block my ability to filter to the front, so I'd sometimes hop on the sidewalk for almost a block to get around that. There's actually a bike box at the front of that intersection and the sidewalk is wide and always deserted there, so it felt completely legit to do that.

* Every now and then the narrow streets here will be totally blocked, either by a large vehicle coming from the other direction (or parked), or a line of cars backed up waiting to turn (usually left, and I'm going to turn right), and I'll hop on the sidewalk to get around them. There's one spot on my regular commute home this happens pretty frequently, and this is where my bike takes a beating, because I'm often moving at speed and the line of cars is on a downhill and I exit off the sidewalk into the street by hopping off the curb. My only other option here (other than waiting a light cycle or two for no good reason) is the street before, which is very rough, very uneven cobblestones, on which my bike and my wrists take a beating. Still, I've chosen this most of the time recently, now that it is finally wet though, that might change. It's amazing how few options of through streets there are in the Seattle area.

Other than those special circumstances I always ride in the street. Depending on what I see in my rearview mirror and what each block of road is like, I may be controlling the lane, in the doorzone, in a bikelane (which is often the doorzone!). My preference is in the middle or to the left of a lane, and if there is a turn lane adjacent or another lane of traffic headed the same direction, this is where I usually am, no matter the speed of automobile traffic or the difference in our speeds.