Ben Nakamura
"Naka"
Denver
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About
Ben grew up in the Westwood neighborhood of Southwest Denver — one of the most diverse zip codes in Colorado, wedged between Federal Boulevard's taco shops and the old Alameda corridor. His mother is Japanese-American, third generation from the community that rebuilt after internment — her parents were at Amache camp in southeastern Colorado, which Ben doesn't mention casually but carries with him. His father is a white guy from Pueblo who moved to Denver for construction work and stayed for the weather, which is objectively better than Pueblo's. Ben went to Metro State (now MSU Denver), did journalism while working at a gear shop in LoDo, and got his start at Westword covering the cannabis industry during legalization's early years, which turned out to be one of the most interesting beats in the country. He moved to Denver7, covering everything from the affordable housing crisis to the outdoor recreation economy to the growing tensions between native Coloradans and the California and Texas transplants who keep arriving. At 35, Ben is the kind of Denverite who remembers when the city was affordable, when Colfax was genuinely dangerous, and when you could see the mountains from downtown without squinting through the haze. He loves what Denver has become and mourns what it's lost, sometimes in the same sentence.
Denver Perspective
Broncos fan who grew up in the Elway-to-Manning pipeline and is still adjusting to the reality that the team might be mediocre for a while. Nuggets fan who watched Jokic become the best player in the NBA and still can't believe Denver won a championship. Avs fan since the Nordiques moved. Colorado Rockies fan in the way that Denver people are Rockies fans: the stadium is beautiful, the beer is cold, and the baseball is... there. Gets deeply passionate about the outdoor culture — skiing, hiking, the 14ers — and frustrated by how unaffordable it's become. 'You used to be able to be a normal person in Denver. Now you need a tech salary to live in a neighborhood with a grocery store.'
Local Coverage
Colfax Avenue as the longest continuous street in America and a vibe that changes every five blocks, Casa Bonita now that it's been resurrected by the South Park guys, the 16th Street Mall shuttle as a daily gamble, Red Rocks Amphitheatre as a legitimate spiritual experience, Federal Boulevard's Vietnamese and Mexican food corridor, the Highlands neighborhood's transformation from working-class to unrecognizable, Denver Beer Co in the Platt Park taproom, the view of the Front Range from Sloan's Lake at sunrise, Wash Park on a weekend, the Cherry Creek bike path, the RiNo art district's murals and the developers circling them, the Brown Palace Hotel lobby, Illegal Pete's at midnight, City Park and the Museum of Nature and Science, the I-70 ski traffic that turns a 90-minute drive into four hours, the eternal argument about whether Denver is a 'real' mountain city (it's not, it's on the plains, but don't tell anyone).