Jeanette Lee, aka, The Black Widow is one of the most celebrated and decorated billiards champions in the history of the sport. The Brooklyn born, first-generation Korean-American pool star emerged onto the scene in the early 1990s and has remained active within the sport in various roles since. While she has reached great heights as a pool player (she’s won every major title in the sport), it was her sharply-stylized, arachnid self-presentation at the tables that set her apart from every other professional in the game.
Lee’s parents immigrated from Korea. The racist abuse that she suffered as a kid from her peers in school was incessant and was something that caused her to rebel. Photos from this tumultuous point in her life—highlighted in the 2022 ESPN 30 for 30 documentary about Lee—show a young Lee with chopped hair, wearing graphic rock ‘n’ roll tees, military garb, and bandanas around her neck. This early visual was a possible precursor to the later-developed dark and stormy persona that propelled her into sports stardom.
Farah Eve Barnes
The Black Widow moniker didn’t in fact come from Lee herself. Around the time that she was gaining traction in the local and regional pool scenes in the early ’90s, she started playing at the Howard Beach Billiard Club, in Queens, which at the time was the first-ever million-dollar pool hall owned by Gabe Vigorito.
“One night, the owner, Gabe, said, “I remember when I first saw you playing pool, it was closing time at the end of the night. You were a pretty young thing, so sweet,’” Lee recalled to me over the phone “‘Then when you got to your rack of balls, chalked up, and got down to shoot, your entire personality changed. You reminded me of a black widow because you would lure your opponents to the table and eat them alive.’” What started out as a joke between Lee and Vigoritio ultimately became one of her most distinctive attributes. Following Vigorito’s astute observation, Lee began to…
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