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Letter: An Aspen legend

Fast Eddie. When someone is far and away at the top of their profession, say an athlete like Michael Jordan, you will hear people say that he is a natural. Of course, to get to the very top and stay there takes an incredible amount of hard work and determination, but still, a lot of natural talent has to be there to begin with.

When it comes to hats, I have never encountered anyone who has the talent of Fast Eddie. He has the taste, the eye, the personality and the swagger to make anyone look his absolute best in a hat. To him, getting someone in a hat is an art. When Eddie tells you how great you look, you believe him!

Fast Eddie’s real name is Ed Golub. He came to Aspen in the early 1970s and later started a little hat shop he called, of course, Fast Eddie’s. As good as Kemo Sabe is with hats, Fast is still Aspen’s Hat Man, and he will always be.



After Eddie closed his shop in 1999, he joined our team and had a huge positive influence on everyone at Kemo Sabe. We still get an amazing number of people telling us that they bought their first hat from him. I nominated Ed for the Aspen Hall of Fame, and to this day I am still irritated that he has not been inducted. He shaped the destiny of a town that is known all over the world for its shopping — he was the most popular retailer in town.

Seldom does a day go by that someone at Kemo Sabe isn’t reminded of Fast Eddie. I wrote the above about Eddie in my book about customer service and the Aspen retail scene, “Kemo Sabe Wisdom.”




Eddie passed away last week. Fast was a pioneer, and he played a leading role in building the rock-solid foundation for the stunning success that Aspen retail enjoys today.

Thank you, my friend. You will be missed but not forgotten.

Tom Yoder

Aspen