Simon Hobart

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Simon Hobart (24 September 1964 – 23 October 2005) was a figure in British gay

Following the huge success of the night, he opened Bedrock. He has said in interviews that he promoted the club's opening night (3 February 1989 At Oxfords, 21 Oxford street W1) by not letting anyone in, forcing them in a long queue outside, but blasting the music and pretending it was packed to capacity inside.

Later he had DJ residencies at

Popstarz and later career

On 25 May 1995, he started his first gay night, Popstarz, capitalizing on the popularity of Britpop. "If Popstarz had failed," he told Alternative London Magazine, "I wouldn’t have embarrassed myself, because I didn’t know anyone in the gay community."

He told Gay.com that he started Popstarz to bring something different to the gay scene, away from the “factory-farm stereotyped, mindless, blinkered gay people” churned out by other clubs. "The feeling was that gay people had been liberated from the hell that they’d been in for most of their teen to adult lives,” he said. “So many people said to me it was like coming out of the closet for the second time.”

In more recent years, his passion was the Ghetto (previously the Tube Nightclub), a small basement club behind the London Astoria, where he had the opportunity to nurture a number of criss-crossing alternative gay scenes.

Simon often said he was willing to take losses on certain nights (such as Redeye) because he was so committed to promoting the alternative gay scene.

In 2003, The Observer included Simon in its list of the 20 most influential gay people in the country.^[1]

Death

Simon Hobart died in the early hours of Sunday 23 October 2005 outside his home in Borough, London. An inquest into his death recorded that 'the toxic effect of alcohol had affected his breathing' [1]

A benefit night was held in Hobart's honour with close friend, Suede front man Brett Anderson as the DJ that night.

References

External links

• Obituary from The Guardian, Wednesday 2 November 2005 by David Hudson
• Obituary from The Times (subscribers only, retrieved October 2011)
• Family pay tribute
  Pink News