I love people watching. It makes for good time fill. It’s also why I was happy to get to the Toronto Sculpture Garden way too early for the May 6 launch of a new exhibition by Toronto-Vancouver collective Instant Coffee called the Disco Fallout Shelter.

The tiny sculpture garden (our best public space winner in 2007) is at 115 King St E, across St James Cathedral. It went from a parking lot to art park in 1981 through a deal with the Odette family, the city and the province. The lot consistently brings free outdoor exhibits to passersby or those fearful of entering the perceived elite world of art galleries.

It’s also a perfect public place to contrast with an exclusive locked fallout shelter.

Planting myself on a nearby bench, the next hour or so was spent watching speed walking suits stop in their tracks and approach the closed circuit display screen and then attempt to sort out what exactly was going on in the nearby shelter.

The CC feed displays a group cooking, playing games, sleeping, reading and other stuff you’d probably do quite happily if you were in a disco-themed fallout shelter while people outside, well, die. Because seriously, we’d be out in the cold when it came to hiding in a place like the Diefenbunker.

Bass-heavy tunes thump through the carefully placed sod, taunting outsiders further. Some people knock on the doors, then tug on them, but nobody’s getting in – the space is only for Instant Coffee members. The “irradiated” park, however, is for all of us (from 8 am to dusk).