Meet Justin Krebs: Take-Action Hero and Not-So-Secret Agent of Change

Politicians want to pick his brain, women want to play with his ponytail; as social movement movers and shakers go, Drinking Liberally co-founder Justin Krebs is a virtual whirling dervish of democratic dynamism (while I, alas, am a compulsive abuser of alliteration.)

He's faster than a speeding blog post! More powerful than a local motormouth! Able to leap tall blowhards in a single soundbite!

In his spare time, when he's not busy building community, defending democracy, and Living Liberally, the charismatic Krebs is a cultural impresario and all-around-stand-up guy (literally–in his spare time, he does comedic improv.) Justin also co-founded the non-profit performing arts space The Tank, a Tribeca mecca for grassroots good times and "an incubator of hip, indie, up-and-comers in the arts," according to Harvard magazine .

It's ludicrous how many lives this George Bailey-on-steroids has touched. He's amassed a stockpile of social capital that politicians and entrepreneurs twice his age would love to have, and he's not even thirty.

Oh, wait...actually, as of last Friday, he is thirty. So several hundred folks, myself included, turned out to celebrate this milestone on Friday night. Friends, family, and fans gathered at the Baruch College Performing Arts Center in Manhattan for an evening that included comedy, music, poetry, and improv from some of Justin's sprawling social circle, followed by a pub crawl which ended, fittingly, at Rudy's, the bar where Drinking Liberally was born.

As a New Jersey tot attending Mondale rallies in short pants and Buster Browns (well, that's how I picture him, anyway), Justin dreamed of one day becoming a baseball player, a cryptozoologist, an inventor, and/or President of the United States. The baseball thing's probably not gonna happen, now, but he's stepped up to the plate in a thousand other ways. And as for Justin's desire to study mythical and extinct beasts, well, why hunt for Big Foot when you could be documenting the real dinosaurs dragging us down into the petro-primordial ooze and making the earth tremble under their monstrously Big (Carbon) Footprints?