Looking for something to do on Saturday? The Straight’s got you covered. Here are 70 events happening in or around Vancouver on Saturday, October 12.

CONCERTS

Timbuktu desert blues band Songhoy Blues plays the Rickshaw Theatre, with local guests Brass Camel.

New York City jazz/ragtime/swing band Scott Bradlee's Postmodern Jukebox plays the Vogue Theatre.

Canadian pop singer-songwriter Jill Barber performs at Fort Langley's Chief Sepass Theatre on her Dedicated To You tour.

North Carolina folk band Hiss Golden Messenger plays the Imperial Vancouver.

Liverpool, England indie-rock musician Banners plays Venue, with guest Ellevator.

Local blues-rock band Mud Bay performs tunes from new album at the Royal Canadian Legion Branch 240.

Gritty American guitar-rockers Nashville Pussy play the Biltmore Cabaret.

Philadelphia acoustic-guitar virtuoso Trevor Gordon Hall plays the Horizon School of Music.

Blues guitarist-vocalist Steve Kozak is joined by Roger Brant on bass, Michael Kalanj on piano, and John Nolan on drums at Frankie's Jazz.

Local guitar-rock veterans 54-40 play the second of two nights at the Commodore Ballroom.

BENEFITS

Know By Heart is a concert and fundraiser at the Red Gate Revue Stage supporting an Expressive Arts Therapy group working directly with refugee children in Surrey public schools.

A guided hike to Capilano Canyon and Cleveland Dam in North Van supports WIRTH Hats' one-for-one counselling fund, which provides free counselling sessions for those unable to afford them.

ETCETERA

The Queens of East Van, Peach Cobblah & Isolde N Barron, host Drag Transforming at the York Theatre as part of TRANSFORM: A Cabaret Festival.

The three-day Vancouver Halloween Parade and Expo is a festival inspired by comics, anime, video games, and mythologies from various cultures.

The Pumpkin Patch at Richmond Country Farms features pumpkins, a live band, a wagon ride, and an animal farm.

The Fall Harvest Marketplace at the City of Port Moody Galleria features local vendors specializing in handmade creations.

FOOD AND DRINK

The Trout Lake Farmers Market at John Hendry Park features seasonal produce, local meat, seafood, eggs & dairy, craft beer, wine & spirits, artisanal prepared food, and handmade craft.

KIDS' STUFF

The Stanley Park Ghost Train takes kids into the mystical and magical world of Alice in Nightmareland, with tombs, tombstones, crypts, and catacombs.

FASHION

Vancouver Kids Fashion Week at David Lam Hall highlights the newest designs in kidswear from local and international talents.

SPORTS

The Vancouver Canucks take on the Philadelphia Flyers in National Hockey League action at Rogers Arena.

COMEDY

The Comic Strip features standup comedy at Tyrant Studios by Jacob Samuel, Chris Griffin, and headliner Simon King (above).

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

Vancouver TheatreSports League improvisers present edgy, uncensored improv comedy for adults at The Late Show at the Improv Centre.

Comedians perform sketches, character bits, improv, and standup at Little Mountain Gallery's Soda Fountain.

Reality TV meets improv in Big Survivor, a brand new comedy show at GO Studios.

ARTS ETCETERA

Join exhibiting artist Sreshta Rit Premnath at the Contemporary Art Gallery for an informal conversation with CAG curator Kimberly Phillips.

Join Lam Wong, curator and artist of the CHAJI group exhibition, for a curatorial tour of the exhibit at Dr. Sun Yat-Sen Classical Chinese Garden.

Cease Wyss and Katherine Ylitalo discuss their work with gardens and Indigenous knowledge at a walking tour and workshop at Griffin Art Projects.

DANCE

Karen Flamenco presents a one-hour show featuring traditional flamenco music, dance, puppetry, and magic at the Improv Centre on Granville Island.

MUSIC

The Yarilo Contemporary Music Society will present a program of world and Canadian premieres by Kelly-Marie Murphy and Alexander Raskatov at the Orpheum Annex.

THEATRE

Final performance at North Van's Presentation House Theatre of SpeakEasy Theatre’s production of Young Jean Lee’s biting satire The Shipment.

Final performance at Havana Theatre of What We're Up Against, a dark comedy about a woman who tries to break the glass ceiling.

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.

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.

Vagabond Players present a performance at New Westminster's Bernie Legge Theatre of Terror By Gaslight.

Naked Goddess Productions presents a performance at Jericho Arts Centre of Dancing Lessons, about a professor with autism who approaches his neighbour for a dancing lesson.

Performance at the Metro Theatre of Ken Ludwig's A Comedy of Tenors, about the last frantic hours before a Three Tenors-style concert in Paris.

Performance at West Van's Kay Meek Arts Centre of Bed & Breakfast, a comedy about being out and finding home.

Final performance at Burnaby's Shadbolt Centre for the Arts of No Foreigners, which meditates on North American Chinese shopping malls as spaces of cultural creation and clash. 

Performance at the Goldcorp Stage at the BMO Theatre Centre of Cost of Living, a Pulitzer Prize–winning play about relationships and living with physical disabilities.

Mitch & Murray Productions presents a performance of Annie Baker's comedy Body Awareness, directed by Aaron Craven.

Performance at Bobby's Apartment of Company, an immersive production about Bobby’s life as a bachelor, told in the context of his 35th birthday.

One-night performance at the Historic Theatre of Corey Payette Musical Songbook, featuring songs and stories from Children of God and Les Filles du Roi and a sneak peek of the new musical Sedna.

GALLERIES

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.

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

Transits and Returns at the Vancouver Art Gallery explores the dynamic between place and movement in the work of twenty-one Indigenous artists from around the Pacific.

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

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.

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).

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.

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.

Potter’s House of Horrors, one of the Lower Mainland’s largest Halloween attractions, features two ultra-scary haunted houses and one geared for kids 12 and under.

MOVIES

Screening at the Cinematheque of Michelangelo Antonioni's 1961 film The Night, depicting 24 hours in the deterioration of a troubled marriage between a successful novelist and a bored socialite.

Late-night screening at the Rio Theatre of a 4K remaster, with new score, of Sam Raimi's 1981 horror flick Evil Dead, starring Bruce Campbell.

As part of the VIFF Repeats series, screening at Vancity Theatre of Jordan River Anderson, The Messenger, Alanis Obomsawin’s documentary about a young boy forced to spend all five years of his short life in hospital while the federal and provincial governments of Canada argued over which was responsible for his care.

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