Rick Riordan and Los Angeles

Warning! May contain Lightning Thief spoilers!

 I was having a conversation with my older brother today. He has read the Percy Jackson series as well as the Heroes of Olympus series, and he found it a little bit offending how Rick Riordan portrays Los Angeles. (My brother has lived there.) First, he made it the entrance to the Underworld, and then he insulted its street system. For some reason, he took offense to this.

 Actually, while my brother was in Los Angeles, he saw a library dedicated to "Richard J. Riordan" and told me about this. I knew that it couldn't be our Rick, because his middle initial is R (for Russell), not J. I did some research and concluded that it was dedicated to Richard Joseph Riordan, the 39th mayor of Los Angeles, who was in office from 1993 to 2001. Could this be somehow connected? Like, while Rick was writing he thought, "Huh, the mayor of LA has the same name as me, maybe I should make that the entrance to the Underworld."

 Or maybe I'm just over-analyzing this. Maybe he just picked Los Angeles because it made sense, with the layout of the US. I really don't know! Perhaps that's a good question for the next Twitter Q&A. ;)