Looking for something to do on Friday? The Straight’s got you covered. Here are 76 events happening in or around Vancouver on Friday, December 8.

CONCERTS

American rock singer-songwriter, guitarist, and Drive-By Truckers member Patterson Hood plays the Fox Cabaret.

American R&B singer Jhene Aiko plays the Vogue, with guests Willow Smith, Kodie Shane, and Kitty Cash.

Toronto punk band Metz plays the Cobalt, touring in support of new album Strange Peace.

Vancouver garage-rock duo the Pack A.D. plays the Rickshaw, with guests Gang Signs and Dopey's Robe.

Canadian jazz vocalist-pianist Diana Krall plays the Queen Elizabeth Theatre, performing tunes from new album Turn Up the Quiet.

New York vocalist-pianist Champian Fulton and his quartet perform the first of two nights at Frankie's Jazz.

BENEFITS

See more than 30 gingerbread creations designed by students, professionals, and amateur culinary artists at the Hyatt Regency Vancouver, with proceeds to Make-A-Wish B.C. and Yukon.

FORUMS

Annette Poitras, recently rescued by Coquitlam Search and Rescue and other SAR members, shares her backcountry rescue story at the Justice Institute of B.C.

CHRISTMAS

See thousands of lights adorning the Capilano Suspension Bridge, canyon, Treetops Adventure, and Cliffwalk at Canyon Lights.

Van Dusen Botanical Garden's Festival of Lights features outdoor light displays, dancing light shows, stories with Santa, live entertainment, a fireside lounge, the Make-A-Wish candle grotto, and sing-alongs.

Make It! Vancouver's Handmade Market at the PNE Forum features more than 265 Canadian artists, makers, and crafters selling clothing, art, home decor, gourmet goodies, and baby and kid items.

Annual Lights of Hope display at St. Paul's Hospital features over 100,000 sparkling lights and raises funds for the St. Paul's Foundation.

The Vancouver Christmas Market at Jack Poole Plaza features more than 75 vendor huts, authentic German food and drink, a carousel, a 30-foot-tall walk-in Christmas tree, live entertainment, and family-friendly activities.

The Peak of Christmas at Grouse Mountain features holiday light installations around Blue Grouse Lake, Christmas movies, crafts, sleigh rides, skating, a gingerbread village, reindeer, storytime, and breakfast with Santa.

Lights at Lafarge features outdoor light displays, live entertainment, roving performers, hot chocolate and cookies, photos with Santa, family-friendly crafts, a holiday market, and choirs at Coquitlam's Town Centre Park.

Join Santa on a flight across Canada and on to the North Pole as he searches for his missing elves at Christmas at Flyover Canada. 

KIDS' STUFF

Hands-on workshop for teens at Vancouver Public Library introduces different software options and basic information for self-publishing.

COMEDY

American comedian Gabriel Rutledge performs the second of three nights of standup at the Comedy Mix.

Canadian comedian James Kennedy performs the second of three nights of standup at Yuk Yuk's Comedy Club.

The Vancouver TheatreSports League presents Christmas Queen 4: Secret Santa, a holiday-themed comedy show that sees the Queen and Santa exchange bodies in a Freaky Friday-style magical sleight-of-hand.

ARTS ETCETERA

Cirque du Soleil presents Kurios: Cabinet of Curiosities, a new production that takes you into the curio cabinet of an ambitious inventor who defies the laws of time, space, and dimension, at Concord Pacific Place. 

Fight for Beauty at Fairmont Pacific Rim features public art projects undertaken with world-class creatives, architecture from architects who are artists in their own right, and fashion by some of the greatest designers in recent history.

Kelly McInnes's multidisciplinary performance Shiny at Left of Main explores and challenges the beauty standards enforced upon women through the media of our culture.

DANCE

The Arts Umbrella Dance Company presents an all-ages retelling of Tchaikovsky's holiday classic The Nutcracker at the Vancouver Playhouse.

The New Westminster Symphony Orchestra and the Richmond Academy of Dance present a seasonal celebration featuring musical favourites and selections from The Nutcracker at Massey Theatre.

LITERARY

Celebrate the release of Ryan Heshka's first monograph, Fatales, at Lucky's Comics, Books, and Gallery.

MUSIC

Conductor William Rowson, host Christopher Gaze, the Vancouver Symphony Orchestra, EnChor and director Gerald van Wyck, and the UBC Opera Ensemble and director Nancy Hermiston present a concert of carols, Christmas classics, and audience sing-alongs at St. Andrew's-Wesley United Church.

The West End Chamber Choir performs works by Andrew Lloyd Webber and Claudio Monteverdi, as well as seasonal favourites at Coal Harbour Community Centre.

Annual Christmas concert at Tenth Church features music by choirs, an orchestra, and soloists.

THEATRE

Theatre Replacement's East Van Panto: Snow White and the Seven Dwarves is a kid-friendly production at the York Theatre that sees the title character flee the wicked Queen of North Vancouver across the Ironworkers Memorial Bridge, landing at the PNE.

Performance at SFU Goldcorp Centre for the Arts of Bah Humbug!, in which Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol comes to life in modern-day East Vancouver.

The Daisy Theatre presents Little Dickens, Ronnie Burkett's take on Charles Dickens's holiday classic A Christmas Carol, at the Cultch.

The Arts Club Theatre Company presents a performance at Goldcorp Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre of The Day Before Christmas, Stacey Kaser and Alison Kelly's play about a perfectionist who's desperately holding fast to her Christmas traditions.

The Vagabond Players present a traditional holiday pantomime based on the classic fairy tale Sleeping Beauty at New Westminster's Bernie Legge Theatre.

The Arts Club Theatre Company presents Onegin--Amiel Gladstone and Veda Hille's musical about a dissipated rogue whose romantic charms stir the passions of the residents of a country estate--at Granville Island Stage.

Pacific Theatre presents Almost, Maine, director Kaitlin Williams's play about the joys and perils of romance, set in a small town in Maine.

As part of its Micro Performance Series, Boca del Lupo presents You Are It, a play that looks at how a female friendship develops, at The Fishbowl on Granville Island.

The White Rock Players Club presents a performance of director Alex Lowe's kid-friendly pantomime The Hunchback of Notre PANTO at Coast Capital Playhouse.

The North Vancouver Community Players present director Miles Lavkulich's version of Linda Sharp's play The Doctor of Oz: A Self-Help Panto, about a girl who travels to a magical land of self-help, at the Theatre at Hendry Hall.

Some Assembly Theatre Company presents writer-actor Nicholas Harrison's play How Star Wars Saved My Life at Performance Works.

Gateway Theatre presents a stage adaptation of A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens's classic tale of a miser who changes his ways after he is visited by ghosts.

Performance at the Cultch's Vancity Culture Lab of The Realistic Joneses, Will Eno's play in which a man and a woman and their neighbours face life-altering problems.

The Arts Club Theatre Company presents a performance at Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage of Disney's Beauty and the Beast, a stage adaptation of the Academy Award-winning animated film.

Vancouver Children's Choir and Brittanica Repertory Theatre present a reading of Charles Dickens's A Christmas Carol at Christ Church Cathedral.

The Geekenders present a Back to the Future musical spoof at the Rio Theatre featuring songs from Beauty and the Beast, Bat Boy, and Huey Lewis and the News.

Oh Man! at Havana Theatre explores the perils of a mother who is raising a son while trying to find her place as a freshly divorced pansexual.

Broadway meets hip-hop in Hype! An Improvised Hip Hopera, a production at Havana Theatre starring Julia Sarah, Kai Rudell, Zach Wolfman, Abdullah Wasfi, Travis Bernhardt, Kia Rae, Brad Duffy, Brent Hirose, Jess Garcia, and Tia Jeanette.

GALLERIES

Intangible at Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art exhibition spotlights six Coast Salish artists influenced by tradition as well as contemporary inspiration.

Entangled: Two Views on Contemporary Canadian Painting at the Vancouver Art Gallery offers insight into two distinctly different modes of painting that have come to dominate contemporary painting in Canada.

Portrait of the Artist: An Exhibition from the Royal Collection at the Vancouver Art Gallery features more than 90 paintings, drawings, prints, photographs, and sculpture highlighting both the richness of the Royal Collection and the complex relationship that the British monarchy has had with artists for the last three and half centuries

Polygon Gallery's inaugural exhibition, N. Vancouver, explores how a specific locale can be reflected through existing and newly commissioned artworks by artists from Vancouver and beyond.

True Nordic: How Scandinavia Influenced Design in Canada at the Vancouver Art Gallery highlights the enduring legacy of Scandinavian design principles in Canada through works by Niels Bendtsen, Bocci, Karen Bulow, Kjeld and Erica Deichmann, Thor Hansen, Andrew Jones, Janis Kravis, molo, Carl Poul Petersen, Rudolph Renzius, and Marion Smith.

Bill Reid Creative Journeys at Bill Reid Gallery of Northwest Coast Art celebrates the three phases of the artist's creative journey, Pre-Haida (1948-1951), Haida (1951-1968) and Beyond Haida (1968-1998).

Carol Sawyer: The Natalie Brettschneider Archive at the Vancouver Art Gallery presents the latest findings of Vancouver-based artist Sawyer's ongoing research project that deftly reconstructs the life and work of the genre-defying, fictional artist Brettschneider.

Emily Carr: Into the Forest at the Vancouver Art Gallery is a collection of Emily Carr's forest paintings that highlight her continued exploration of the natural environment.

MUSEUMS

City on Edge: A Century of Vancouver Activism at the Museum of Vancouver explores the history of Vancouver's street protests through over 650 images of street demonstrations, protests, and riots from the early 1900s to present day.

The Fabric of Our Land: Salish Weaving at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC takes visitors on a journey through the past 200 years of Salish wool weaving.

Amazonia: The Rights of Nature at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC features Amazonian basketry, textiles, carvings, feather works, and ceramics both of everyday and of ceremonial use, representing indigenous, Maroon, and white settler communities.

In a Different Light: Reflecting on Northwest Coast Art at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC features more than 110 historical indigenous artworks and explores what we can learn from these works and how they relate to indigenous peoples’ relationships to their lands.

The Lost Fleet at the Vancouver Maritime Museum investigates the unjust 1941 seizure of 1,200 Japanese-Canadian fishing vessels following the bombing of Pearl Harbour through a collection of historic photographs, models of Japanese-Canadian-built fishing boats, fishermen’s tools, and replica documents.

ATTRACTIONS

North Vancouver's Grouse Mountain features a Skyride to the peak with views of the city and the Pacific Ocean, as well as ziplines, a wildlife refuge, helicopter tours, paragliding, dining, and the Grouse Grind.

Celebrate winter with free skating in the heart of downtown Vancouver at Robson Square Ice Rink.

Mount Seymour features skiing and snowboarding, lessons, chairlifts, terrain parks, tubing and tobogganing, and snowshoe trails.

At the Bloedel Conservatory you can take in more than 200 free-flying exotic birds and 500 exotic plants and flowers.

West Vancouver's Cypress Mountain features skiing and snowboarding lessons, snowtubing park, cross-country ski trails, downhill skiing and snowboarding trails, and snowshoeing tours.

The new Parq Vancouver features two luxury hotels, a 24-hour casino with 600 slot machines and 75 table games, eight restaurants and lounges, and the sixth-floor outdoor Parq.

Take a ride in an exterior glass elevator and get a 360° view of Metro Vancouver and the North Shore mountains at Vancouver Lookout.

Stanley Park features 400 hectares of trails, gardens, beaches, and West Coast rain forest, with scenic walking and biking along the 8.8 kilometre seawall.

The Vancouver Aquarium features almost 800 animal species in galleries ranging from Canada's Arctic to the Amazon rainforest.

Lighthouse Park features 10 kilometres of hiking trails, picnic areas, guided walks provided by the Lighthouse Park Preservation Society, and the historical 1912 Point Atkinson Lighthouse.

Science World features hundreds of interactive exhibits in five permanent galleries, live science demonstrations and workshops, and giant movies in the Omnimax Theatre.

MOVIES

Screening at Vancity Theatre of Jane, Brett Morgan's documentary about the National Geographic cameraman who was sent to film Jane Goodall's pioneering work with chimpanzees in Tanzania's Gombe Stream National Park in the 1960s.

Free screening at the Cinematheque of Two Generators, the first film by Vancouver-based artist and musician Rodney Graham, affiliate of the so-called Vancouver School of photoconceptualism.

Late-night screening at the Rio Theatre of writer-director-producer-star Tommy Wiseau's famously awful 2003 cult-movie phenomenon The Room.

Screening at Vancity Theatre of BPM (Beats Per Minute), Robin Campillo's drama in which the AIDS activist group ACT UP begins a heated campaign to raise awareness and disrupt the blasé middle class in early 1990s Paris. In French with English subtitles.

Screening at Vancity Theatre of God's Own Country, Francis Lee's film about a man who slowly opens up to the possibility of happiness with the help of a ruggedly handsome Romanian farmhand.

For all the latest Metro Vancouver event announcements and updates follow @VanHappenings.