For Adam Goldman, a Place That Isn't Out to Get Him Adam Goldman lives in one of those Brooklyn prewar buildings near Prospect Park where the buzzer doesn't always work, and the vestibule and lobby doors are frequently left unlatched. "But I feel safe here," said Mr. Goldman, the creator, director and star of "The Outs," the cultish online TV series that chronicled the dissolution of a romance between two gay 20-something men in contemporary Brooklyn. This apartment is a step up. Mr. Goldman, 27, is a bona fide struggling artist, although he grew up in affluent Newton, Mass., and studied theater at Bard College. "After graduation," he said, "I moved home and worked at the Apple Store for six months like a good nerd, to save money to move to Williamsburg." Williamsburg was not kind to him. "Certainly, my first apartment tried to kill me," he said. The heater in the basement exploded, and I got a call at work saying that flames were coming out of the chimney. It was December, and there was no heat. I had to move really quickly. His next apartment was hard by the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway. "I didn't mind the traffic," he said, "but then a nightclub opened downstairs and noise became an issue. When the ceiling caved in and acrid water poured down, I went onto Craigslist and found this place. The renovated three-bedroom apartment that Mr. Goldman has called home for the past two years is one block from the Franklin Avenue subway station and a short walk from the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. "If you're a real estate broker you say we live in Prospect Heights," he said. But we say we live in Crown Heights, which is the correct answer. Mr. Goldman shares the apartment with two roommates: Sasha Winters, who plays Oona, the straight female best friend on "The Outs," and Matthew Phelan, an artist and writer. "One of the reasons I chose this apartment is that we could have a TV room," Mr. Goldman said. Our last apartment had no common space. I really wanted a place where we could hang out and watch "Mad Men" with our friends." Furnished with an Ikea sofa draped with an afghan made by his grandmother and a Saarinen chair from a thrift shop, the TV room is not much larger than a walk-in closet. But it's a place of pride decorated with sentimental objects: a Surrealist painting bought at a stoop sale that mesmerizes a character in Episode 5 of the show; a multicolored glass bong. That's a prop bong! Mr. Goldman said. I mean, it's a functioning bong, but we purchased it on St. Marks Place for the show. We wanted the character Frank to have this weirdly overstylized bong. I think it's very beautiful. The sad-looking robot pillow in the corner with the gangly arms and legs is a souvenir of a cross-country trip that Mr. Goldman took by himself a few years ago to record an independent radio documentary about 10 American towns named Hollywood. "A friend noticed that my passenger seat was empty and gave me the pillow for a co-pilot," he said. Besides books, I don't really own a lot of stuff. Neither do the characters on "The Outs," which started with the first of six episodes in March 2012 and had an unvarnished verisimilitude. "We shot in places that belonged to friends that we could use for free, including this apartment," he said. The characters Jack and Mitchell (played by Hunter Canning and Mr. Goldman respectively) sleep under the same rumpled Ikea sheets that are on his bed today - life imitating art imitating life. "I only cleaned up for you as much as I would for a first date," he said, surveying his disheveled surroundings. "The Outs" does not romanticize Brooklyn. "The show's not aspirational," he said. The characters don't go to trendy restaurants or clubs. They take the subway at 3 a.m. because they can't afford cabs. "I think of the subway as an oasis," Mr. Goldman said. When I am home, I always feel like I should be writing or researching or sending e-mails. But on the subway, I don't feel like I have to be working on anything. I can read or listen to music. If it takes me an hour to get somewhere on the subway, I think of it as an underground vacation. He pauses for comic effect. Does that sound depressing? Living a bare-bones existence was the only way he could afford to make the series, which was financed by Kickstarter campaigns that raised $1,600 and $22,000. "The plan was to pour all my creative energy into the show and hope it would turn into something," he said, noting that more than 16,000 people have liked "The Outs" on Facebook. As the show went viral, it gained middle-aged fans including the actor Alan Cumming, who volunteered to appear as himself in the Hanukkah Special, the "bonus" seventh episode. The buzz about "The Outs" has reached even the White House. He was invited to President Obama's L.G.B.T. Pride reception the other day. "I called the social secretary's office to make sure it wasn't a scam," Mr. Goldman said, "and the gentleman I spoke to told me he was a fan. It's incredibly bizarre that in the upper echelons of power, people are watching the show. While "The Outs" focused on love and the "radioactive effect" of ending a relationship, Mr. Goldman's next, still-untitled, series will focus on economic survival in the same milieu. "The central question of the new show," he said, "is: How long are you expected to do something that you hate for free until it becomes something that you love and can make a living from, and whether that feels possible to people in my generation." It seems possible for Mr. Goldman, who mentions that he now has "representation in L.A." As he talks, thumping music from the street suddenly ricochets around his second-floor bedroom. "We live on a loud corner," he said with beatific resignation. I've always had that experience in Brooklyn. I have never lived somewhere that someone did not drive by four times a day blaring loud music.