Apparently, there is a “Little Saigon” in San Francisco… (I wasn’t aware of one…) Back in 2004, San Francisco recognized the two-block corridor of Larkin Street between Eddy and O’Farrell streets as Little Saigon, a designation on par with Chinatown and Japantown. Everyone knows this section of town as the Tenderloin, which is mostly a pretty sketchy part of town. Well, this past Tuesday, Little Saigon celebrated the unveiling of two marble pillars topped with lions at Larkin and Eddy Street, as reported by ABC7 News in “SF opens up its own ‘Little Saigon’“:
“The first wave of Vietnamese Americans came to San Francisco after the fall of Saigon some 30 years ago. They moved into the Tenderloin and began to slowly change the neighborhood. The tenderloin is one of the toughest areas of the city, but now, Vietnamese businesses are everywhere from restaurants, like Mangosteen to the Mayfair Barber Shop to tax accountants, catering to 13,000 residents. Five years ago, the Board of Supervisors passed a resolution, sponsored by Chris Daly, to designate two blocks of the commercial corridor as Little Saigon.”
Unlike in San Jose, the name Little Saigon generated very little controversy amongst the Vietnamese-American population, which is relatively small (2000 census puts the Vietnamese-American population city wide at about 13,000 with about 2,000 in the Tenderloin) compared to over 90,000 Vietnamese-Americans.
