The 5th annual Asian Heritage Street Celebration was held Saturday, May 16, 2009, in San Francisco’s Civic Center in front of the Asian Art Museum, leading up to the Little Saigon District.

The goal of the AHSC is to promote and foster pan-Asian Pacific American identity by bringing together communities and encouraging dialogue and sharing of diversity. In the five years since its inception, the AHSC has quickly become the United States’ largest assemblage of APAs — drawing over 80,000 people annually to the annual weekend event.

The AHSC is also the only outdoor event in the Bay Area to rotate its location each year to best showcase both the diversity of San Francisco’s neighborhoods and its API residents and businesses. Starting in Japantown, the AHSC moved to the Sunset District’s Chinese community, paid homage to the large Filipino community in the South of Market area in its third year, and returned to Japantown in 2008. This year, the AHSC celebrates San Francisco’s Little Saigon and the Vietnamese community.