After the closing of the Hopetoun and countless other venues, yet another Sydney music institution is under threat from gentrification and developers: the Abercrombie Hotel.

Arguably the smelliest dance floor in the state, the Abercrombie was nothing but an ugly, under-utilised "old mans drinking" facility of the six o'clock swill age, attached to the site of a former inner city brewery and on a very busy street corner - Abercrombie and Broadway.

It was however in a great location for students, literally just across the street from the University of Technology and down the road from the Uni of Sydney. Being on a main intersection also meant it could trade late into the night. It wasn't long until promoters discovered this smelly, nostalgic dive bar and turned into a hipster dance hangout - and it started with niche electronic music parties.

The Foreign Dub DNBBQ crew were the first guys to seize this grungey smelly den for one of their all-day, all-night jungle-music-and-cooked-meat-athons (sometime around 2001 I'm guessing), bringing in crowds to dance the night away in the carpeted bar and the outside beer garden (and of course to try and navigate between the two via the incredible small single staircase). Uber Lingua's world music fiestas soon followed, as did the anti-establishment performance night Creative Dissent.

But the Abercrombie remains synonymous with one night: Purple Sneakers. Named after a You Am I song and with a lineup generally stretching around the block, the sneakers became Sydney's see-and-be-seen Friday night for the Strokes/Franz indie uni student generation, getting to the point where wanker celebrities like Andrew Stockdale from Wolfmother were turning up to hang out, non-professional DJs like Chris Taylor from The Chaser came to spin tunes, local bands did DJ sets, record companies launched albums and many, many drunken pick ups took place. It's not much of a stretch to say that for indie kids, there really is nowhere else to go out late on a Friday night in Sin City.

Being down the street from my work means I've hung out at The Abercrombie far more than I should have for someone with a full time job, and looking back it was more than a venue, but rather a microcosm of my whole sordid twenties. At the Abercrombie I've kissed girls, reunited with old friends, cried my heart out, performed slam poetry, thrown up in the bathroom, danced like a crazy man to The Who at dawn, been ushered into a VIP room during a police shut down and been called a "good lookin' man" at the bar by Aussie rock legend Tim Rogers. We even had a work Christmas party there once, complete with professional decorations (but still the same godawful stench mix of sweat, beer, piss and puke).

Hopefully the Abercrombie will be back - with a new, less smelly carpet. Until then, Sydney seems to have run out of dodgy old man pubs for hipsters to reclaim for dance parties. What are we to do?