Looking for something to do on Friday? The Straight’s got you covered. Here are 60 events happening in or around Vancouver on Friday, September 27.

CONCERTS

Juno-winning blues rocker Steve Hill plays the ANZA Club.

Cantopop artist Anthony Wong performs at the Vogue Theatre.

Dinner and jazz concert with the Cory Weeds Quartet explores the music of tenor-saxophone titan Dexter Gordon. 

Singer-songwriter and actor from England, Mahalia, plays the Biltmore Cabaret, with guest Jvck James.

Vancouver reggae-pop singer-songwriter Daniel Wesley plays Langley's Chief Sepass Theatre.

TODDcast Podcast Friday Nights at the Railway Stage & Beer Café features performances by You Big Idiot, ATD, and Blackwood Renegades.

KGBD performs jazz-rock filled with groove and improvisation at Tyrant Studios.

BENEFITS

Africa With the Masters includes a fundraising dinner and concert event at Moberly Centre to support the African Friendship Society.

Buy original artwork, meet the local artists, listen to live music, and enjoy wine samples from Blasted Church Winery at a fundraiser for North Burnaby Neighbourhood House.

ETCETERA

The four-day Interior Design Show at the Vancouver Convention Centre features more than 200 exhibitors, new products and furniture, installations, speakers, and workshops.

FASHION

Fashion event at the Fairmont Hotel Vancouver features canapes and cocktails, silent auction, and an exclusive glimpse of Jason Matlo's new made-to-measure collection French Kiss.

FOOD AND DRINK

Scotch specialist Joel Virginillo brings a special selection from the distinguished Balvenie to the Spirits Speaker Series at the Goldcorp Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre.

Pop-Up Dinner at HY Tea Lounge features dishes crafted by Ivy Yang, an executive sous chef with ELISA Steakhouse and formerly with Blue Water Café and Ask for Luigi.

FORUMS

Stratagem: Workplace Justice Reimagined at UBC's Robert H. Lee Alumni Centre is a three-day diversity and inclusion conference that infuses political discourse with social-justice knowledge.

TAKE ACTION

Global Climate Strike is a march and rally winding up at Vancouver City Hall that calls for immediate action against climate change, inspired by the efforts of 16-year-old Swedish activist Greta Thunberg.

COMEDY

Nasty Women Comedy is a feminist and feisty comedy show at the Biltmore Cabaret.

Stereotypical students join forces to avoid detention in Back to School TheatreSports at the Improv Centre on Granville Island.

Edmonton comedian Brett Forte performs the first of two nights of standup at Yuk Yuk's Comedy Club.

The Vancouver Improv Festival features 14 improv-comedy performances, plus workshops, at the Cultch Historic Theatre.

ARTS ETCETERA

The American comedy-magic duo Penn & Teller performs at Richmond's River Rock Show Theatre. 

DANCE

In Reading the Bones at the Roundhouse Community Centre, Kokoro Dance conveys the trials and vulnerability of different stages of life and being.

France's La Caramelita Flamenco Company performs at the Waterfront Theatre as part of the Vancouver International Flamenco Festival. SOLD OUT.

LITERARY

bill bissett reads with Geoff Inverarity, Maxine Gadd, Judith Copithorne, and Stephen Roxborough at Burnaby's Shadbolt Centre for the Arts.

The two-day LiterAsian festival at Chinatown House spotlights Asian-Canadian literature, history, and culture. Featured authors include Rita Wong, C.E. Gatchalian, May Q. Wong, Philip Huynh, and Sally Ito.

Launch at Massy Books of Isabella Wang and M.W. Jaeggle's debut chapbooks from Baseline Press.

MUSIC

French pianist Richard Clayderman performs at the Queen Elizabeth Theatre.

The Vetta String Quartet performs works by Beethoven, Shostakovich, and Tchaikovsky at West Point Grey United Church.

THEATRE

Walk through a pop-up city of stories on the Queen Elizabeth Theatre Plaza in Trophy, where, inside each tent, a person tells the true story of a moment in their life when everything changed.

The Arts Club Theatre Company presents a performance at Stanley Industrial Alliance Stage of A Thousand Splendid Sons, a sweeping tale set in which two women’s lives intersect through fate in war-torn Afghanistan.

Performance at New Westminster's Anvil Centre Theatre of Herringbone, a darkly comic off-Broadway hit set in 1929 in the heart of the Great Depression.

Black Mirror meets The Handmaid's Tale in Hysteria, a production from Direct Theatre at Havana Theatre.

United Players present a performance of Ben Power's A Tender Thing, which posits: What if Romeo and Juliet didn't die in the Capulet family vault?

FIrst Impressions Theatre presents a performance at Deep Cove Shaw Theatre of the adult romantic-comedy Frankie and Johnny in the Clair de Lune.

The Arts Club Theatre Company presents a performance at the Granville Island Stage of The Birds & the Bees, a Canadian comedy about love, lust, beekeeping, and the artificial insemination of turkeys.

UBC Theatre & Film presents a performance at Frederic Wood Theatre of BECKETT 19: or some such semblance, directed by Gerald Vanderwoude.

Five youth share their experiences coping with mental health, racism, connection, and disconnection in the transdisciplinary performance Away With Home at Scotiabank Dance Centre.

GALLERIES

Vikky Alexander: Extreme Beauty at the Vancouver Art Gallery features photography, sculpture, collage, and installation, including new massive murals created in 2019.

Without a Word at the Polygon presents a selection of portrait photographs from the private collection of Bill Wu, including works by Berenice Abbott, Robert Doisneau, Walker Evans, Graciela Iturbide, and Mary Ellen Mark.

Alberto Giacometti: A Line Through Time at the Vancouver Art Gallery features more than 130 paintings, sculptures, drawings, and lithographs from the artist’s pre- and postwar career.

Robert Rauschenberg 1965-1980 at the Vancouver Art Gallery features rarely seen prints, drawings, collages, sculptural works, and large-scale works from one of the most experimental periods in the artist's career.

Views of the Collection: The Street at the Vancouver Art Gallery focuses on the street as a source of inspiration and site for the production and enactment of culture, with works by Roy Arden, Kati Campbell, Robert Capa, Robert Frank, Fred Herzog, Hong Chan Park, Judy Radul, Jack Shadbolt, Danny Singer, and Ian Wallace.

MUSEUMS

There is Truth Here at the Museum of Vancouver focuses on rare surviving artworks created by children who attended the Inkameep Day School (Okanagan), St. Michael’s Indian Residential School (Alert Bay); the Alberni Indian Residential School (Vancouver Island); and Mackay Indian Residential School (Manitoba).

Shadows, Strings and Other Things: The Enchanting Theatre of Puppets at the Museum of Anthropology at UBC illustrates the role puppets have played in the transmission of cultural knowledge, stories, and values.

Wild Things: The Power of Nature in Our Lives at the Museum of Vancouver delves into the life stories of local animals and plants—how they relate to each other and how they connect people to nature in the city.

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.

Haida Now: A Visual Feast of Innovation and Tradition at the Museum of Vancouver is guest-curated by Kwiaahwah Jones and features more than 450 works by carvers, weavers, photographers, and printmakers, collected as early as the 1890s.

ATTRACTIONS

North Vancouver's Grouse Mountain features a Skyride to the peak with views of the city and the Pacific Ocean.

The 22-hectare VanDusen Botanical Garden features over 255,000 plants from around the world and almost two dozen sculptures.

Parq Vancouver is a 24-hour casino with 600 slot machines and 75 table games, eight restaurants and lounges, and the sixth-floor outdoor Parq.

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

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

Capilano Suspension Bridge features seven cable bridges suspended in trees, the Living Forest exhibit, totem-pole collection, Cliffwalk, and Treetop Adventure. 

The B.C. Sports Hall of Fame and Museum features permanent galleries devoted to Terry Fox and Rick Hansen, a rock-climbing wall, a virtual sports simulator, and history galleries.

Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden is an authentic representation of an age-old garden tradition that reached its peak in the Ming Dynasty.

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

The Deeley Motorcycle Exhibition features more than 250 privately-owned bikes from around the world.

Stanley Park features 400 hectares of trails, with scenic walking and biking along the 8.8-kilometre seawall and totem park featuring eight poles by First Nations artists.

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

Nitobe Memorial Garden is a traditional Japanese garden located at the University of British Columbia with waterfalls, stone lanterns, audio guides and tours, and a ceremonial teahouse.

MOVIES

The Vancouver International Film Festival features screenings of over 320 films at the Vancity Theatre, Cinematheque, Rio Theatre, and other venues. Screenings today include A White, White Day, Hlynur Pálmason’s drama about a former police chief in an isolated Icelandic community, who is obsessed by both his late wife's death and the suspicion that she was cheating on him at the time.

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