The Gothamists Are Coming! The Gothamists Are Coming!

Hot NY group blog Gothamist, which recently launched the spinoff blog Chicagoist, is now heading out west.

LAist is currently in beta mode, but unofficially launches next week. (I would have gone with "Los Angelist," but according to Network Solutions it was already registered by a company called Tucows Inc. in January -- perhaps anticipating Gothamist's move out West.)

Writes publisher Jake Dobkin:

Chicagoist has been a great success and a lot of fun for us, so we've decided to take our freakshow to a new city: Los Angeles. We decided to name the site LAist, which we find is short, to the point (pronounced "el-lay-ist"), and available, domain-wise. The new site will be written by our friend Tom Berman, an expert on the city and a great writer, and by a number of great contributors.

First Gawker spinoff Defamer and now LAist... suddenly we're getting a lot of NYC bloglove out here in SoCal. I'm a Gothamist fan, so I'll be keeping an eye on whether LAist is able to translate it for our 'hood. Although, one has to ask, where are all the homegrown L.A. group bloggers, besides blogging.la and LABlogs.com?