Beverly Hills City Hall Poses as L.A. City Hall for Tom Cruise Film Shoot

Beverly Hills City Hall: a hotter version of ourselves.

Funny thing about Los Angeles: Because of all the (retouched) films set in our city, it's idealized around the world as this glamorous, gorgeous land of sunshine and bikini girls and pretty pretty palm trees.

And there is some of that. But little do the dreamers know that our slacker city government has let the roads deteriorate and the infrastructure crumble. Hollywood, especially, is a big ghetto mess of oil spots and fast-food trash.

So big-budget filmmakers have apparently resorted to dressing up nice neighboring towns and pretending they're Los Angeles:

A Beverly Hills Patch reader spotted a strange plaque outside the Beverly Hills City Hall this week.

Beverly Hills Patch

"A new sign outside City Hall had 'City of Los Angeles' written on it for a film shoot."

Mayor Barry Brucker confirms on the Patch comment board that the impostor signage was just being used for a one-day film set:

"Indeed the picture is a prop for an upcoming Tom Cruise movie shoot. I guess we should take pride in the fact that the movie producers felt our majestic and historic City Hall is the most beautiful around!"

Guess so. To be completely fair, the L.A. City Hall building is kind of gorgeous, too -- but what with all its crumbling side-streets (a real-life "Battle Los Angeles"!) and wrecked backyard (thanks to Occupy L.A., and the banksters that got them there), it apparently wasn't fly enough for Cruise's latest mission. Compare and contrast:

[@simone_electra / swilson@laweekly.com / @LAWeeklyNews]