Valentine’s Day gets your blood pumping

Attention! All you Lili Marlenes and Boogie Woogie Bugle Boys! Vancouver’s annual Sweetheart Hangar Dance once again requests your presence, in uniform or other vintage dress, for a Saturday night of music, dancing and all-around nostalgia.

Vancouver’s own VanPort Jazz Band will provide the swinging big-band sound of the 1940s. A no-host bar will provide guests a little lift. The event is a fundraiser for the Friends of Fort Vancouver, a nonprofit organization that supports educational activities and programs offered year-round at the historic site and national park.

Nowhere but Vancouver can you dance in a museum airplane hangar that’s part of a vast, multigenerational historic site. If you attend the dance, consider the site and all the history that went down right here, from exploration and settlement (during early 1800s) all the way to lumber milling for airplanes (during World War I) and, of course, the construction of warships and aircraft carriers along the waterfront (during World War II); consider, too, all the soldiers who passed through the Vancouver Barracks on their way to goodness knew where, perhaps never to return.

After that, grab your sweetie for a kiss and a dance. Tickets are $30 each.

Laboratory love

Anybody with the ability to swipe right knows, modern technology is giving love and relationships a cybernetic spin. In a previous visit to Kiggins Theatre for its “Science on Tap” learning-while-drinking lecture series, researcher and educator Dr. L. Kris Gowen of Oregon Health & Science University has spoken about teen sexuality in the age of the internet; on Feb. 13, on the night before Valentine’s Day, Gowen returns to cover the same topic in greater depth.

Gowen’s talk, “Sex, Relationships and Technology,” will look at the strange new landscape of “sex tech,” from online dating and “sexting” to virtual sex and romance with robots. A statement from Gowen says she’ll discuss “how technology is rewriting the rules of sex and romance, and how the science of love is struggling to keep up.”

Tickets are $10, or what you can afford.

Love lies bleeding

If your ideal Valentine heart is one that’s bleeding on the floor, here are a couple Halloween-style options for you. They’re a little far afield for some, but weren’t you getting ready to flee anyway? 

• Embedded in the former movie theater in Kelso’s Three Rivers Mall is a permanent Cinema of Horrors offering two ongoing scare scenarios  (“Farmhouse” and “Dark Legends of New Orleans”), starring monstrously costumed live actors and other surprises. On Feb. 8-9, the Cinema of Horrors goes all lovey-dovey with a special “Hearts of Horror” version. (While you’re at it, save the dates of July 5 and 6 for the Zombie Apocalypse.) Tickets are $20.

• Here’s a similarly terrifying Portland attraction with roots in Vancouver. Longtime haunted house lovers Mike Mudgett and his son Brian started a Vancouver company called Confront Your Fears in 2011; they moved it to Portland in 2015 and renamed it “Fear PDX.” That’s where you, a trained vampire hunter, are in danger of discovering that “Love Bites,” Feb. 14 through 16. Tickets start at $28.