Happy Birthday to us! We here at DCist can hardly believe it’s been three years since the official launch of this humble little web site, so we couldn’t let the occasion pass by without the slightest amount of fanfare. It was three years ago today that founding editors Rob Goodspeed and Mike Grass first launched DCist, the fifth site in the -Ist empire, which now includes fourteen cities all over the world. What started as a labor of love with only five bloggers has since grown to supporting a full-time employee and almost 40 regular contributors. We’ve posted 8663 times over the last three years, and welcomed nearly 71,000 comments (well, welcomed might be too strong a word for some of our comment threads, but you know what we mean). You might also be interested to know that our most commented post ever was the rock throwing thread from this May, with 221 comments and counting.

We’re working on putting together a special event for our readers to celebrate towards the end of this month, and will let you know all the details soon. This web site would certainly be nothing without all of you who spend your time here, debating the issues, being overly sensitive and correcting our typos. At the ripe old age of three, DCist salutes you, the commentariat. And of course, we salute ourselves. It is our birthday, after all.

Milkshakes for everyone!

Photo by SheepGuardingLlama used under a creative commons license.