Well, in those memories you wouldn't have to go to any market, you'd just see a few tables along the way in busy places on your way anywhere. Maybe even smaller shops (usually illegal construction alongside bigger buildings or even just in the middle of something supposed to be a square).
BTW, about illegal construction - frankly I'm nostalgic of all that. Because yeah, those cheap plastic things were illegal and were all demolished. Instead we now have supposedly legal heavy, tasteless, threatening "shopping centers" here and there, miraculously making the space feel more constrained than those old things would, all belonging to the right people, with nice shiny perfectly legal businesses inside.
It's somehow relaxing to get someplace backwater sometimes and see towns looking that old way. Though the town I'm thinking about looked differently back then, and I liked it more, but what will you do.
A-and frankly there were plenty of situations where it was perfectly legal (as possible in the Russian 90s), but "the permit was issued by mistake, no compensation is in order, free the building for demolition by tomorrow" for a 20 years old building solves any problem.