Soft hills rise up from the town.
It has to do with the area's soft hills, long vistas needlepointed with wine vines, custodial cypresses and dolce vita.
Nearly every human female between the ages of 11 and 18 has uttered them, as hormones transform lines into curves and flat surfaces into soft hills.
The Valley, Wright wrote in his 1932 autobiography, was "lovable," "lying fertile between two ranges of diversified soft hills, with a third ridge intruding and dividing it in two smaller valleys at the upper end".
It was (and remains) minimalist rather than minimal, with glass walls looking out over San Francisco Bay to the Golden Gate Bridge and the soft hills of Marin County, and, more to the point, with food that looked, and tasted, like something you had always dreamed of eating.
No longer fenced off, now ensconced in the soft hills and approachable from various angles, the rinks appear from the lake or the esplanade or from atop the buried pavilions, where walking paths lead to balconies with views over the skaters and extending as far as the Verrazano Bridge.
