SYDNEY — Welcome to Bondi Beach, hippest venue of the Sydney Olympics. A place so cool they're all wearing shades. Only here they call them "sunnies."

Bondi Beach — and I do mean the beach — is hosting the beach volleyball portion of the Olympics. Set square in the middle of what is billed as Australia's most famous beach, about 40 feet from the ocean, is a 10,000-seat arena with one sandy volleyball court in the middle of it.

When Sydney's organizers announced that Bondi — say it Bond-eye (it's an Aboriginal word describing the sound of the waves hitting the shore) — would be an Olympic venue, news of widespread murmuring immediately hit the headlines and the airwaves. Bondi didn't want to give up its beach for the Games, the reports said. The people who live here didn't want the Olympics, didn't need them and besides, that patch of sand is exactly where a lot of them like to throw down their towels.

On Wednesday, I took the subway to Bondi, a city beach not unlike Venice Beach in Los Angeles but with a lot fewer tattoo stands. I was in the search of local vocal criticism. A little controversy. I wanted to see what a town full of Stephen Paces (Most Vocal Critic of the Salt Lake Games) looked like.

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Like a lot of stories of widespread disgust and revolt, this one didn't turn out to be true, either.

Judging from the "Aussie, Aussie, Aussie, Oi, Oi, Oi" banners and the "Go U Aussies" signs and the numerous flags flying from the balconies, Bondi and the Olympics seem to be coexisting just fine.

"The only complaining was from a few very vocal people who just moved in," said a longtime Bondi resident named Russ as he waited for a bus.

"They have a lot of money and they move here and then they think they own the beach," he said.

The funny part, Russ said, is that it was most of those people who left town to escape the Olympics — and now the Olympics have been a resounding success in Bondi without them.

"I reckon at the end of the day even those who didn't think it was such a good idea will think it was," he said.

Bear in mind, Russ isn't with the chamber of commerce or anything remotely close. He moved to Bondi from inner Sydney in 1975, back when it wasn't the trendy move it is now. He bought a place for peanuts. "Used to be cheap as chips to live here" is how Russ put it.

Gradually, the ocean views with city proximity became desirable, and up went the prices. Now, a one-bedroom studio with an ocean view is half a million, at least, and if you don't see Tom Cruise and his Aussie wife, Nicole Kidman, strolling by, you might see Pamela Anderson or the world's richest Australian, Kerry Pecker.