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

nightlife Nightlife is a collective term for entertainment that is available and generally more popular from the late evening into the early hours of the morning. It includes pubs, bars, nightclubs, parties, live music, concerts, cabarets, theatre, ...

. He founded the alternative

nightclub A nightclub or dance club is a club that is open at night, usually for drinking, dancing and other entertainment. Nightclubs often have a Bar (establishment), bar and discotheque (usually simply known as disco) with a dance floor, laser lighti ...

Popstarz at London's Scala. He was also the owner and promoter of

Soho SoHo, short for "South of Houston Street, Houston Street", is a neighborhood in Lower Manhattan, New York City. Since the 1970s, the neighborhood has been the location of many artists' lofts and art galleries, art installations such as The Wall ...

venues

Ghetto A ghetto is a part of a city in which members of a minority group are concentrated, especially as a result of political, social, legal, religious, environmental or economic pressure. Ghettos are often known for being more impoverished than other ...

(which hosted the

Nag Nag Nag Nag Nag Nag was an influential London club night at Simon Hobart's Ghetto nightclub. Founded by DJ, promoter and musician Jonny Slut in 2002, it ran for six years. The night is commonly associated with the ambisexual post-electroclash scene. Hi ...

night) and Trash Palace.

Early career

He began his career as a promoter and DJ at a

Westbourne Grove Westbourne Grove is a retail road running across Notting Hill, an area of West London. Its western end is in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea and its eastern end is in the City of Westminster; it runs from Kensington Park Road in the ...

goth Goth or Goths may refer to: * Goths, a Germanic people Arts and entertainment * Gothic rock or goth, a style of rock music * Goth subculture, developed by fans of gothic rock * ''Goth'' (2003 film), an American horror film * ''Goth'' (2008 f ...

club in the early 1980s, the KitKat. In 1984, a photo of him in full goth regalia was splashed across the front page of the tabloid ''

The Sun The Sun is the star at the centre of the Solar System. It is a massive, nearly perfect sphere of hot Plasma (physics), plasma, heated to incandescence by nuclear fusion reactions in its core, radiating the energy from its surface mainly as ...

'', above the caption "Godfather of Goth." Hobart took the fall for the first club raid on London's first all-night club. Police (dressed as goths) undertook surveillance of the venue and saw no club managers or owners at the place: just the 20-year-old DJ. 200 police descended upon the premises. Hobart was sentenced to undertake

community service Community service is unpaid work performed by a person or group of people for the benefit and betterment of their community contributing to a noble cause. In many cases, people doing community service are compensated in other ways, such as gettin ...

. Following the huge success of the night, he opened

Bedrock In geology, bedrock is solid rock that lies under loose material ( regolith) within the crust of Earth or another terrestrial planet. Definition Bedrock is the solid rock that underlies looser surface material. An exposed portion of bed ...

. 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

Heaven Heaven, or the Heavens, is a common Religious cosmology, religious cosmological or supernatural place where beings such as deity, deities, angels, souls, saints, or Veneration of the dead, venerated ancestors are said to originate, be throne, ...

. Simon then moved into

Drum and Bass Drum and bass (commonly abbreviated as DnB, D&B, or D'n'B) is a genre of electronic dance music characterised by fast Break (music)#Breakbeat (element of music), breakbeats (typically 165–185 Tempo, beats per minute) with heavy Bass (music) ...

, opening two underground DnB nights, Fusion and Vivid.

Popstarz and later career

On 25 May 1995, he started his first gay night, Popstarz, capitalizing on the popularity of

Britpop Britpop was a mid-1990s United Kingdom, British-based music culture movement that emphasised Britishness. Musically, Britpop produced bright, catchy alternative rock, with significant influences from British guitar pop of the 1960s and 1970s. B ...

. "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 Gay.com was a chat, personals, and social networking website catering to the LGBT community. The site was a digital brand of Here Media Inc. In addition to community features, the site featured LGBT-related news and features. As of September 20 ...

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 The London Astoria was a music venue at 157 Charing Cross Road, in London, England, that operated from 1976 to 2009. Originally a warehouse during the 1920s, the building became a cinema and ballroom. It was converted for use as a theatre in t ...

, 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 ''The Observer'' is a British newspaper published on Sundays. First published in 1791, it is the world's oldest Sunday newspaper. In 1993 it was acquired by Guardian Media Group Limited, and operated as a sister paper to ''The Guardian'' ...

'' included Simon in its list of the 20 most influential gay people in the country.

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

A benefit night was held in Hobart's honour with close friend, Suede (band), Suede front man

Brett Anderson Brett Lewis Anderson (born 29 September 1967) is an English singer best known as the lead singer and primary lyricist of the band Suede. After Suede disbanded in 2003, he fronted the Tears with former Suede guitarist Bernard Butler in 2004� ...

as the DJ that night.

References

External links

Obituary
from

The Guardian ''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper. It was founded in Manchester in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'' and changed its name in 1959, followed by a move to London. Along with its sister paper, ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardi ...

, Wednesday 2 November 2005 by David Hudson
Obituary from The Times
(subscribers only, retrieved October 2011)

Pink News ''PinkNews'' is a UK-based online newspaper marketed to the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and questioning community (LGBTQ+) in the UK and worldwide. It was founded by Benjamin Cohen in July 2005, initially released in print, b ...

{{DEFAULTSORT:Hobart, Simon 1964 births 2005 deaths Accidental deaths from falls 21st-century English LGBTQ people People from Hemel Hempstead Accidental deaths in London 20th-century English LGBTQ people