Re-creating the brand of San Francisco? As travelers flood into San Francisco to take advantage of its (perhaps temporary) gay marriage policy, consider whether that policy is part of a larger local economic plan. Only last Sunday, Joan Ryan wrote in the San Francisco Chronicle about

San Francisco's growing realization that its singular charm is not enough anymore to counterbalance the high cost of workers' compensation in California, the ragged men and women slumped outside department stores and cafes, the $500,000 fixer-upper homes, the uneven public schools, the 1.5 percent payroll tax. …

"This city is no longer going to sit back and wait," [San Francisco Mayor] Newsom told a gathering of businesspeople soon after he took office last month. "San Francisco is on the move."

To that end, Newsom is establishing a marketing department in his office of economic development. … San Francisco is taking the counterintuitive tact of attracting big business not by downplaying the city's antiestablishment spirit but also by emphasizing it. …

Just as the mayor's office and the airport have ramped up their marketing, San Francisco's Convention and Visitors Bureau is about to start an ambitious campaign to lure tourists back. Officials are careful to say they are not "re-creating the brand" of San Francisco. "It's about how to re-express it in a new way," said Laurie Armstrong, the bureau's vice president of public relations.