Pallookaville concept hard to maintain without original visionary

The 2013 opening of the gourmet corn dog restaurant Pallookaville Fine Foods in downtown Avondale Estates created an intriguing marriage between city and entrepreneur.

In some respects Avondale Estates was frozen in time, its most powerful symbol a quarter-mile long hedge separating downtown business district from residential neighborhoods. Its lake and park had signs warning nonAvondale residents to keep out.

Along comes Pallookaville founder Jim Stacy, a former punk rock musician turned television personality, chef, actor and corndog virtuoso among others. Heavily tattooed, standing 6-6 with a sprawling untamable red beard, Stacy stood out at city commission meetings. He also breathed instant electricity into a city that needed it.

During a 2016 interview with the AJC Stacy gave this partial description of himself: “I am an illustrator of children’s books of some renown. I’m a cook of some renown and a bartender of some renown.

“I play a little drums, I’m a pretty good session and live harmonica player. I own every Looney Tune cartoon and every Popeye cartoon that isn’t utterly racist. I don’t own any Disney stuff.”

He’s also played Darth Vader in an all-Star Wars rock band, he’s been Uncle Laffo the Clown and he’s played in an all-Santa band called “Yule Log.”

The name “Pallookaville” comes from the Polish word “palooka”— Stacy can spend a half hour explaining why he added the extra “l”—which means a washed up, hack boxer. Stacy, not surprisingly, loves 1970s heavyweight boxing.

Perhaps it was inevitable that someone of such diverse pursuits wasn’t suited to the daily grind of restaurant ownership.

In early 2016 Stacy moved into one of Avondale Estates original 10 houses inside the hedges. But even while touting Avondale’s potential as “a great artisan and food community,” he sold Pallookaville to restaurateurs James Maggard and Jason Hylton.

The restaurant closed for two months, likely signaling its death knell. Reopening in March 2016, Maggard says now they couldn’t figure out how to make Stacy’s quirky concept work. One Decatur restaurant owner remarked that Pallookaville’s corndog-and-carnival atmosphere was “fascinating and like no other restaurant. But nobody can eat corndogs on a regular basis.”

Then last March one employee stabbed another, reportedly 11 times with a butcher knife, an incident receiving its share of publicity. Maggard said the restaurant raised money for the victim’s hospital bills and eventually he returned to his job as a dishwasher.

But in the end Pallookaville wasn’t, in Maggard’s words, “making any money.” He still believes in the space, he said, and recently one city official expressed hope a new restaurant may open as soon as January.

Despite everything Stacy said recently, if he had it to do over again, he’d change little.

“It was beautiful when it was rocking,”he said.“That is and will be the best thing I ever take away from this adventure. I worked, loved, laughed, cried and dreamed incredible stuff with some great folks and stellar customers. I can’t really ask for more or different.”