Full Coverage: Chat & Selfie

CicLAvia staff member Tafarai Bayne, who also serves as a commissioner for the Los Angeles Department of Transportation and does his own consulting, recently hung out in Chinatown with the California section’s Jason Song, talking about dating without a car, bringing CicLAvia to South L.A. and the proper etiquette for arriving at business meetings after a sweaty ride.

Novelist and TV writer Leonard Chang and the California section’s Jason Song recently hung out at a restaurant by the Los Angeles International Airport, talking about making it in Hollywood, why cabernet sauvignon is worse for your wallet but better for your soul, and which “Justified” character he had the most fun writing for.

Comedian and actor Danny Cho, who was raised in East L.A. and has lived in Koreatown for most of his post-college life, met the California section’s Victoria Kim at a sleek coffee shop in the heart of Koreatown that sells both kimchi carbonara and quesadillas.

As apparently well-fed students meandered onto the USC campus for the fall semester, reporter Daina Beth Solomon sat with teaching professor LaVonna Lewis in her office in the Price School of Public Policy and grilled her about her study of food’s role in communities and her work pushing liquor stores to sell vegetables and farmers markets to take food stamps.

Colorado native Ryan Gattis’ new novel, “All Involved,” unfolds during the 1992 Los Angeles riots.

Tech educator Daphne Bradford joined reporter Daina Beth Solomon for pancakes at the Denny’s near Dorsey High School in South L.A., where Bradford teaches computer science through her nonprofit, Mother of Many.

Oaklanders think their town is hella cool, so the California section’s Lee Romney grilled Oaklandish CEO and creative director Angela Tsay at the company warehouse in Jack London Square, surrounded by floor-to-ceiling stacks of the edgily boosterish “local love” apparel she pioneered.

Sportswriter Molly Knight and the California section’s Jason Song recently hung out in the Gold Room near Chavez Ravine, day drinking and talking about city life, Waze and Knight’s book: “The Best Team Money Can Buy: The Los Angeles Dodgers’ Wild Struggle to Build a Baseball Powerhouse.”

On another day with too little water in California, Marty Adams, senior assistant general manager with the Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, and the California section’s Matt Stevens sat in the cafeteria at DWP headquarters and discussed Adams’ decades helping to design and operate the Gordian knot of pipes that pump 500 million gallons of water a day beneath the city.

At Noodle World on Valley Boulevard, Daniela Gerson slid into a booth, ordered cold Vietnamese noodles and talked to the California section’s Frank Shyong about her role as editor of the Alhambra Source, a trilingual online news publication the USC Annenberg School created five years ago.

Weird little dogs on short leashes barked. Edgy rock blared.

The main character in many of Naomi Hirahara’s mystery novels is a 70-something Japanese American gardener who sleuths about solving crimes in places like downtown Los Angeles’ flower mart.

The California section’s Bob Sipchen cornered American Civil Liberties Union attorney Peter Bibring at Justice Urban Tavern, a block from the Los Angeles Police Department’s headquarters/dog park.

Wing Lam, co-founder of Wahoo’s Fish Taco, was recently caught savoring shrimp that had been minced, sauteed, breaded and rolled in seaweed at Capital Seafood in Irvine.

Yong Chen, UCI historian and author of “Chop Suey, USA: The Story of Chinese Food in America,” still drives around Orange County comparing demographics and food culture.

Beauty is a word rarely used in scientific journals, which is why Margaret Wertheim started the Institute for Figuring in 2003.

As anesthesiology residents at USC, Elizabeth Bales and her colleagues couldn’t take time off when they were feeling under the weather.

The California section’s Carla Rivera recently met up with UCLA English professor Ursula Heise in downtown L.A.’

Surrounded by rocks and the teetering stacks of more than 200,000 old maps, books and documents that clutter the Nevada Mineral and Book Company in Orange, the California section’s Louis Sahagun recently sat and yakked with the shop’s owner, Walter Lombardo, about cartography and what it means to him and to California.

The California section’s Amina Khan recently took a stroll along a surprisingly lush stretch of the Los Angeles River with Kate Johnston, a co-founder of the Women’s Center for Creative Work.

Ohio native David Cooley opened the Abbey in 1991 as a gay coffee and pastry shop.

California recently hung out with education rabble-rouser Steve Barr, consuming expensive caffeine at Grand Central Market’s G&B Coffee.

California recently rode shotgun with Arturo Vargas, executive director of the National Assn. of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials (NALEO) and its educational fund, on a quick tour of his childhood neighborhood in L.A.’

1. Find yourself in front of Full House Restaurant.... 2.