Activist Uses Video Eye to Expose Reputed Sexual Supermarket : Vice: In a fight to reclaim part of Balboa Park, a prime San Diego tourist area, a television station owner shows cars cruising by.

It’s midafternoon and John Willkie has taken up his battle station to renew the fight for Marston Loop.

He has a weapon that strikes fear into the furtive hearts of his prey: his video camera. And he has something even more fearsome: his television channel.

Willkie, 39-year-old social agitator and president/general manager of the city’s newest commercial television station, has joined the fight to reclaim a portion of Balboa Park that has gained a reputation as a gay sexual supermarket.

Although television usually catches flak for lowering public morality, Willkie contends that he is using his slice of the airwaves to do the opposite: raise the city’s consciousness about retail sex in a very public place.

The result is “Balboa Park’s Road to Nowhere,” a weekly 30-minute show that is nothing but video verite of cars slowly cruising the southwestern section of the park, faces and license plates clearly visible. A soundtrack includes Roxy Music’s “Love Is the Drug” and Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows.”

The show carries a disclaimer: “We have no way to know why a particular driver took the Marston Loop.” Willkie edits out scenes of lost tourists and the eight park employees who drive the loop to get to their office.

Willkie cannot prove that the cruisers are in the market for illicit sex, but there is strong circumstantial evidence that the drivers are interested in something other than the flora and fauna.

The street is a two-lane, one-way, enclosed loop, running eight-tenths of a mile, with only one entrance and exit. Yet it experiences a steady flow of cars. Nearly all the cars contain lone males, and a high percentage of the cars have no front license plates.

Willkie figures a little unintended exposure on his BAY-63, a low-power station that serves the southern half of the city, will make cruisers reluctant to return. He is not interested in proving guilt.

“As a journalist, I’m a contemporary cultural anthropologist,” he said. “Waiting for someone to say what’s happening is illegal, that’s expert-itis.”

Anthropology is not without its hazards. Willkie often is the recipient of rude finger gestures, and worse.

“I’ve been threatened a dozen times, me and my camera,” he said. “I’ve been accused of being a cop or a Christian.”

Willkie is not the first person to aim a video camera at Marston Loop. A half-dozen members of a group called PARK (People’s Action for Rescuing Kids) have been taping for four months, in an effort to discourage men from engaging the services of underage boys. They threaten to turn the tapes over to law enforcement.

“After a while you get to know the regulars,” said PARK member Jim Tapscott, a heating and air-conditioning contractor.

The group sometimes carries signs saying “If You Want Children, We Want Your Picture.” In a scene captured on tape, group members were confronted by an adult prostitute who complained: “I don’t appreciate you guys messing up with our jobs.”

On days when neither Willkie nor PARK is filming along Marston Loop, men can often be observed having sex in the bushes, in automobiles or, under cover of darkness, on picnic tables. Assignations are often made in a parking lot.

The Police Department, which conducts periodic undercover vice operations in the Marston Loop, has told PARK members not to engage in confrontation or debate.

Although PARK and Willkie have been championed by radio talk show host Roger Hedgecock, the former mayor of San Diego, others are not so sure the filming is doing much good.

“I would be for it if they were working with a program to help the kids,” said Michael Portantino, publisher of the San Diego Gay & Lesbian Times. “Just chasing the johns away does not solve the problem of hungry drug addicts in the park” engaging in prostitution.

With wooded glens and mature trees, Marston Loop--named for George Marston, one of the city’s early merchant-philanthropists--is one of the most scenic sections of Balboa Park, San Diego’s pride and joy and centerpiece of its tourist attractions.

“It’s somewhat frustrating to us that more people, more families don’t use” that part of the park, said Park and Recreation Director Marcia McLatchy, whose department has tried to help Marston Loop shake its unsavory image by organizing bike rides and fun runs.

“It carries a little bit of a reputation,” she said. “Families who spread out their blankets for a picnic and then look around and see nothing but an all-male environment feel uncomfortable.”

“Road to Nowhere” joins an eclectic lineup on Channel 63, anchored by 16 hours a day of the Home Shopping Channel. Also on the bill are a nightly news show from Germany, Morton Downey Jr.’s show, music videos, “Cafe Futurismo” (electronic music and oscilloscope imagery), “The Wall Street Journal Report,” and occasional treats such as sumo wrestling and nude poetry recitals.

Just how many people are viewing “Road to Nowhere” and other Channel 63 fare is uncertain. The station, which began broadcasting late last year, has yet to register a blip on the Nielsen ratings, but Willkie says feedback from Home Shopping indicates that somebody is watching.

He vows to continue his filming until Marston Loop changes. Then he plans to move his camera to other prostitution hot spots near the Naval Training Center and along a commercial strip in the eastern part of the city.

“I’m interested in drawing public attention and condemnation to the people who water this enterprise (prostitution) with their money,” he said.