November 23, 2022
In a way, purchasing the Black Elks’ building was like coming home for Ken Carson. The building sits in a part of Albuquerque, N.M., he describes as “the ’hood.” Carson once lived here before moving to the more affluent Northeast Heights in the 1960s, where he attended high school with only three other Black students. It’s as though he is “reverse gentrifying” the neighborhood by coming back to open a second location of his Nexus Brewery.
Carson sees his return as a victory. He grew up there, along with all of his Albuquerque friends.
“You got a Black guy going back to his old neighborhood and upgrading a building,” Carson said. “You’d have to be crazy not to appreciate the fact that we’ve been able to redo an old building that’s historical to the Black community and see the faces of people within the community who used to go to that place.”
Carson owns two locations of Nexus these days: the Nexus Brewery & Restaurant and Nexus Blue Smokehouse in his former South Broadway stomping grounds. A third location, the Nexus Silver Taproom, shut down in December 2019.
Despite the closure, Nexus has thrived, but life in the food and beer business wasn’t always what Carson had envisioned for himself.
From Banking to Beer
A common thread in Carson’s life emerged years before opening Nexus: being the only Black person around.
It began in high school and followed him into the professional world when Carson worked his way through college at New Mexico State University as a federal examiner with the Comptroller of the Currency. He moved into banking locally and eventually found himself in a deputy director role, where he led the banking department for the entire state of New Mexico. He was appointed director when he was around 30.
After working his way up to bank president, he intended to retire after a successful career. But being on the wrong side of a shareholder fight meant his role as president was no longer tenable. And then came the financial crisis of 2007-08, otherwise known as the Great Recession, considered by many to be the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. The bank began to lose money and business slowed.
“I started thinking, this bank’s gonna fail, I’m going to be unemployed,” Carson said. “During the financial crisis, an unemployed banker’s not going to get employed.”
The plan was to start another bank, but Carson thought better of it. Instead, his thoughts turned to a totally different pursuit: beer.
“I became a fan of breweries before it became popular,” Carson said. “In the 1990s, we were in Colorado a lot. It was kind of a habit and a hobby where I would go and hang out at breweries.”
At the time, Black brewery owners and brewers were rare, with Garrett Oliver…
