  We report the discovery of an unusually blue L5 dwarf within 10 pc of the Sun
from a search of Sloan Digital Sky Survey (SDSS) spectra. A spectrophotometric
distance estimate of 8.0+/-1.6 pc places SDSS J141624.08+134826.7 among the six
closest known L dwarfs. SDSS 1416+13 was overlooked in infrared color-based
searches because of its unusually blue J-K_S color, which also identifies it as
the nearest member of the blue L dwarf subclass. We present additional infrared
and optical spectroscopy from the IRTF/SpeX and Magellan/MagE spectrographs and
determine UVW motions that indicate thin disk kinematics. The inclusion of SDSS
1416+13 in the 20 pc sample of L dwarfs increases the number of L5 dwarfs by
20% suggesting that the L dwarf luminosity function may be far from complete.
