Left: Sarah in her writing room, where she composes her books in longhand. Right: Gabriel, surrounded by his bikes, adjusts a gramophone that is the only way for the Chrismans to listen to music in their home
But the impulses that drive them aren't so unfamiliar. Many of us have realized, as Gabriel did riding his bike to the UW, that technology intended to make our lives easier has hideous hidden costs. Former executives at social media companies have lamented the stress it has placed on society. Politicians have proposed "right to repair" laws and monopoly-busting measures to curtail the power of tech giants. Ordinary internet users have deleted Uber and boycotted Amazon for the inhumane way they treat their workers. We download apps that stop us from using our other apps, and go on luxury vacations for the express purpose of not being able to check our email. Some of us dream of a world where cars no longer fill cities with noise and pollution, where our politics is no longer driven by incomprehensible rage cycles fed by social media, cable news, and talk radio."If you actually want to pursue a free and diverse society you have to equally tell people they shouldn’t discriminate on the basis of things people can choose."
Gabriel and Sarah give a presentation at the library where Gabriel works
Without TV, internet, phones, or any other kind of screens, the Chrismans spend a great deal of their time reading
Though Victorian Secrets got a mention in the New York Times and earned Sarah a spot on The View (meeting Whoopi Goldberg “was like meeting the Queen,” she said), most of the attention has been on the outward quirkiness of their lives: the way they dress and the bikes with the big front wheels and the gramophone in their front room. They’ve given presentations at museums and historical societies, answered questions from countless journalists, been filmed riding their antique bikes too many times to count. At one point they hoped these things would boost Sarah's book sales and “debunk myths” about the Victorian era. “I wanted to help people understand that it’s just a different culture,” Sarah said. “People of the past, especially women of the past, were perfectly happy living in their culture. They were perfectly happy being themselves. And it wasn’t that they were brainwashed."The Chrismans hate that Victorian progressives are referred to as “ahead of their time”—they were completely of their time, just as everyone always is.
To get to work at the library on a nearby island, Gabriel rides his bike—a reproduction of a 19th-century machine—onto a ferry at Port Townsend
The Chrismans attract a lot of attention in public, like this selfie seeker, even if no one is really sure who they are or why they are dressed like that

