Intertrend Communications continues its wonderful annual tribute to the Lunar New Year in Long Beach. The Asian-centric marketing firm—which has been an essential cog in bringing everything from Long Beach Walls to the restoration of the historical building it is in—honors the Year of the Snake with an interactive, playable version of the old-school snake game found on phones during the late 1990s and 2000s.



How this year’s Lunar New Year in Downtown Long Beach installation works
To play is super simple: Use your phone to scan the QR code presented at the first-level, street-facing windows of Intertrend at 228 E. Broadway. Enter your name, enter the queue to play, and you’re on your way. You must be near the building to play.

Past installations from Intertrend for Lunar New Year in Long Beach
- 2016: Year of the Monkey
For this installation, Intertrend covered the entirety of their first-floor windows were covered with red envelopes that visitors could freely peel off and open as they passed by. Behind them, a series of pieces by Long Beach Walls veteran and world-renowned artist James Jean honoring the mighty monkey.
- 2017: Year of the Rooster
Taking over Intertend’s first floor center window, this beautiful sculpture used over 1,000 crystal jewels to create a piece inspired by traditional Chinese landscape painting.
- 2018: Year of the Dog
In one of the earliest public examples of AI in the city—if not the first—visitors’ movements, were tracked, bringing digital dogs to life that interacted with them in real-time.
2019: Year of the Pig
Ah, the slot machine that was the Year of the Pig (or boar, depending on your preference). A giant slot was made where visitors could win actual prizes thanks to a giant slot sticking out of the building and a digital display for the game itself.

- 2020: Year of the Mouse
One of the most direct pieces in the decade-long series, Year of the Mouse in 2020 featured a cheeky and cheesy neon light installation on Intertrend’s east-facing facading.
- 2021: Year of the Ox
Is that James Bond? OOX—a play on the famed 007 spy—featured custom animations that took over the windows of the Edison Theatre building across the street from Intertrend, with OOX walking alongside visitors as they passed by.
- 2022: Year of the Tiger
Embracing everything tiger—from the famous golf player to Frosted Flakes cereal—and the Intertrend crew wrapped it up with the iconic song “Who Let the Dogs Out” (because “tiger” in Chinese sounds just like “Who-Who”).
- 2023: Year of the Rabbit
This year, Intertrend “flipped the famous saying ‘down the rabbit hole’ by inviting everyone to jump out of it! We collaborated with an artist to create anamorphic art that appeared flat to the human eye, but from the right angle on camera, it looked like visitors were jumping out of the rabbit hole.”

- 2024: Year of the Dragon
The dragon “symbolizes boldness and protection, and that’s exactly what we did! We worked with an artist to bring a giant dragon to life on top of our office building, blessing the entire city of Long Beach for everyone to see.”

The restoration of the Psychic Temple is one of Intertrend’s most beautiful contributions to the Downtown.
Across three years—2013, 2014, and 2015—the wonderfully gorgeous structure that sits on the south side of Broadway in between the Promenade and Long Beach Blvd. had a white wall with colorful nods toward Long Beach culture wrapped around its front face. This was because Intertrend was moving in to take over the space and would not only make it home to their marketing firm but use the actual building as a space for art and culture in Downtown.
Intertrend bought the building for a $1 in 2012 after the RDA dissolved and left a multitude of properties within the city under a giant, existential question mark. Of course, there was a caveat to the seemingly cheap purchase: since the building, known as the Psychic Temple, was an historic landmark, a very pricey and lengthy restoration of the structure would have to be covered by Intertrend. It wasn’t much of a steal when millions has to be put into its proper restoration. When the front of the building was first complete around March of 2014, van Dijs worried that the impeccable facade was too perfect.
“It came out so beautiful that I was worried that people wouldn’t think it was a true restoration,” van Dijs said. “But it is exact—we even have the pictures to prove it.”



A small history of the Psychic Building showcases it is an appropriate place to be an epicenter of culture.
When it had finished construction in 1905, the Psychic Temple building opened with a bang: it became none other than the headquarters of a local cult by the name of the Society of New & Practical Psychology, known to members as The Holy Kiss Society.
Amidst lawsuits and enemies, owner and Society leader William C. Price was forced to sell the building to Anna Sewel for about $3K. Throughout DTLB, it then became commonly known as the American Hotel thanks to its signage that survived the building’s many other incarnations. A speakeasy. A brothel. A flophouse. Yet somehow, through all the debauchery and dilapidation, the building survived, even becoming an historic landmark in the city in 1989.