It’s easier to love San Francisco some weeks more than others — and we’ve had a string of bad weeks.

Like always, everything is too expensive. Like always, the homeless crisis just seems to get worse. Now we have that extra added layer of political corruption at City Hall in which our leaders allegedly traded their integrity for such small potatoes as free tractors and car repairs.

So thank goodness for a visit from Herb Caen. No, the legendary Chronicle columnist who died in 1997 did not come down from the heavens. He came from Alabama.

Loyal readers may remember a 2018 column about Gordon Harvey, a 52-year-old history professor at Alabama’s Jacksonville State University. He first visited San Francisco in 2011 to run a marathon and has fallen so hard-core in love with our city that he shares daily quotes from Caen under the Twitter handle @HerbCaenDaily.

Like this romantic one: “A city is not gauged by its length and width, but by the broadness of its vision and the height of its dreams.” Or this lighthearted one: “For our Dodger friends: Spring training! One of the nicest two-word phrases in the language along with ‘check enclosed,’ ‘open bar’ and ‘class dismissed.’”

Back then, I interviewed Harvey on the phone. But this time around, I met him in person. He was here last week to research a book he’s writing about bike messengers. It’s tentatively titled, “Beasts of Burden: Labor, Technology and the Rich Culture of San Francisco’s Bike Messengers.”

But he wasn’t here only for work. He revealed a souvenir from his trip, rolling up his sleeve to show off a brand new tattoo of Sutro Tower on his forearm, inked by Danny Boy Smith at Let It Bleed Tattoo on Polk Street. Harvey has loved the tower since he first saw it nine years ago, and he hasn’t been able to shake it.

“The first thing I saw coming into the city was this big, monstrous tower, and I had no idea what it was and why it was there,” he recalled, likening his Sutro obsession to Richard Dreyfuss becoming consumed with a UFO in the sci-fi flick “Close Encounters of the Third Kind.”

“It’s that thing that screams San Francisco,” Harvey continued of our giant red-and-white tower on a hill.

He also has a Sutro Tower pin affixed to his backpack, and Sutro Tower emerging from the fog as his banner photo on Twitter.

Harvey has become of a bit of a San Francisco Twitter celebrity, so my Chronicle colleague Peter Hartlaub and I invited our #TotalSF friends to meet him over burgers and beers at Red’s Java House on the waterfront. (I forgot until after we announced the meetup on Twitter that Harvey is vegan, and Red’s was about the worst possible choice. But he was delighted to be in his favorite city and was in a very forgiving mood.)

We sat on the back patio in glorious weather, taking in views of glass office towers sparkling in the sun, the Bay Bridge sweeping overhead and boats sailing by on the bay. Harvey’s fans brought him gifts including a bag of San Francisco books from City Lights Bookstore. One longtime Chronicle reader showed him a prized possession: a signed letter from Caen thanking her for a submission to his column.

More Information Join Chronicle columnist Heather Knight and pop culture critic Peter Hartlaub for our fourth #TotalSF movie night. This time, we’ll watch Steve McQueen race through the mean streets of San Francisco in the 1968 film “Bullitt.” Bagpiper Lynne Miller will perform, Norton the human-sized It’s-It will appear, and local beer will be on sale. 7 p.m. Thursday at the Balboa Theater, 3630 Balboa St. Tickets available at cinemasf.com/balboa.

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Harvey was in his element. Exactly where he wanted to be.

“I can’t explain it — it’s that thing I’ve fallen in love with,” he said of his beloved San Francisco. “It’s like the ideal place for me. It’s so free-wheeling and so open. You can be anything you want to be and it’s not not normal.”

Harvey is anything but normal in rural Alabama. Not only is he a vegan interested in bike messengers, but he’s a hardcore liberal who hopes Elizabeth Warren will be our next president in a town full of conservatives who adore President Trump. He’s an avid bicyclist, public transit fan and runner in a car-centric town that doesn’t have bike lanes, buses or sidewalks.

“Where I live, Starbucks is exotic,” he said.

So where does he get his coffee at home?

“Other than Folgers?” he quipped.

He doesn’t fit in in Jacksonville, so he’s kept his abiding love for our weird left coast city mostly secret.

“In my community, I try not to expose myself too much,” he said. He can speak freely to me because he’s pretty sure he’s the only person in Jacksonville, Ala., who reads The San Francisco Chronicle.

In fact, he didn’t even tell his wife about his Twitter identity until last week.

“She was like, ‘What? Who’s Herb Caen?’” he said with a laugh.

Why, I asked him, does he have so much love for a city with such glaring problems? He said our issues seem uniquely San Francisco to us, but they’re not. Poverty and homelessness exist everywhere. Politicians everywhere are corrupt. But not everywhere is as beautiful or complex or historically fascinating as San Francisco.

“I know I look at the city through really, really rose-colored glasses,” he said. “But it’s like an onion that never runs out of layers. The more you peel and think you get it, you don’t.

“There’s no one sentence that explains San Francisco,” he continued. “You can explain L.A., you can explain New York, you can explain Chicago. Don’t even try with San Francisco, and I think that’s why I like it.”

While in San Francisco, he visited the Haight to eat vegan pizza and peruse the Booksmith. He took such a bumpy ride on the 49-Van Ness, he felt like he got a free shiatsu massage. He got a library card in Giants orange and black. He ran through Golden Gate Park. He toured City Hall, The Chronicle and the Walt Disney Museum. And like a true San Franciscan, he attended a public forum on the shooting of a man in the Haight by an FBI agent.

Now back home in Alabama, Harvey told me via text he’s going through “major withdrawals.” He’ll never be able to afford to move here, he said, but he’s hoping to score another research grant to fund another trip.

He can’t wait to come back to a city some residents can’t wait to leave.

“No city’s perfect,” Harvey said. “But your perspective determines the way you treat it. If you love it, you’re going to treat it differently than if you loathe it. And if you loathe it, why are you here?”

“I think you’re fortunate to be here,” he said. “This city’s got everything.”

Thanks, Professor. I needed that reminder.

San Francisco Chronicle columnist Heather Knight appears Sundays and Tuesdays. Email: hknight@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @hknightsf