Manal and Alaa's bit bucket free speech from the bletches

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The Sakia is a Cairo-changing place. It has helped lots of youth artists get their work known to the public. From an ugly abandoned place to probably the cultural center with the strongest impact in Cario. Since its not government controlled it has some form of freedom. Well to some extent.

Almost every day there is a concert of a different kind.

They have two main halls, one with a stage. Both are underneath the bridge. They recently added an open air stage beside the Nile, and a small garden.

Alaa blogged about his experience with Wireless in Sakia:

Al Sakia has what must be one of the best wireless spots in town, right now I'm sitting directly by nile writing this entry, while cairo is covered in a filthy smog cloud I'm enjoying a nice (relativly fresh) breeze and still get the benefit of all the spam, goatse, pr0n and eglug one gets at home.

There is also a GNU/linux lab and EGLUG guys meet regularly every Saturday to help people with their problems in Linux. The lug treats the sakia as if it was their home.

Wireless in the sakia opens lots of possibilities. One is to bootleg a concert and upload it instantly to the net.

but let me warn you their upload ain't big enough for serious streaming, in fact the only negative thing about sakia is their WiFi, due to the concrete all around you the signal is week everywhere except by the nile, the same adsl connection is running two public access labs and the offices so speed sucks specially upload, their dns doesn't work most of the make sure to have your own dns settings.

but worst of all is how their dhcp insists on giving new ips after few minutes.

More photos of the Sakia.