nonprofit Creative Class Collective<\/a>.<\/p>\nTogether, the move and the work reflect Huang\u2019s belief that culture and community can\u2019t be understood from a perch looking down.<\/p>\n
I recently sat down with Huang as downtown continues to grow vertically and the city prepares for the world\u2019s attention during the 2028 Olympic Games, both of which raise a perennial question for Long Beach: What is its identity?<\/p>\n
Know thyself<\/p>\n
Huang\u2019s perspective is unique: Born and raised in Taiwan, she came to the United States, earned a graduate degree and worked in New York and Los Angeles corporate settings before founding Intertrend in 1991.<\/p>\n
She is no longer an outsider but can still see the city from that perspective.<\/p>\n
Huang knows that Long Beach is a proud place that recoils from others \u201ctelling it what to do.\u201d But what it is or wants is largely dependent on who you ask.<\/p>\n
That presents challenges as downtown fills quickly with new residents while businesses continue to struggle with limited foot traffic. Beyond downtown, new tech and aerospace firms have occupied office space by the acre near the airport \u2014 while at the same time, the city\u2019s legacy associations with West Coast rap artists like Snoop Dogg and Warren G are as relevant as ever.<\/p>\n
The city\u2019s complex ecosystem includes a collection of \u201ccommunities\u201d \u2014 whether it be City Hall, the tourism sector, musicians and artists or individual proprietors and residents \u2014 that tend to exist in parallel, not in conversation, Huang said, leading to a very fragmented identity.<\/p>\n
The perils of speed<\/p>\n
Society today moves fast, and attention \u2014 the core business of Intertrend \u2014 has become elusive.<\/p>\n
Huang, a Boomer, admits she struggles at times with the pace and style of this moment. \u201c30 to 35 years ago, you could pause and think,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
But culture, she said, must be created intentionally, and that requires thinking, listening, talking \u2014 all of which take time.<\/p>\n
Without that, she fears Long Beach risks becoming a city of landlords, with creators, talent and cultural energy being centered outside its boundaries.<\/p>\n
\u201cI meet the most interesting Long Beach residents outside of Long Beach,\u201d Huang said \u2014 at galas in West Hollywood, museums in Los Angeles, or tours in foreign countries. \u201cWhy is that? I cannot understand that.\u201d<\/p>\n
The challenge for the city, she said, is adapting fast enough to survive while slowing down enough to care for the people who live here.<\/p>\n
That Long Beach can accommodate so many versions of itself is a beautiful asset, she said. \u201cWe also need to make sure there is a north star.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Intertrend once sat nine floors above downtown Long Beach. The advertising firm moved to street level a decade…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":177948,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[131,133,132],"class_list":{"0":"post-177947","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-long-beach","8":"tag-long-beach","9":"tag-long-beach-headlines","10":"tag-long-beach-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177947","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=177947"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/177947\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/177948"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=177947"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=177947"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=177947"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}