"There used to be shops..."

We went to Wisconsin for vacation a couple years ago to visit the Apostle Islands. We drove into a town called Ashland and found a nice brewpub, the South Shore Brewery (http://www.southshorebrewery.com/). After hanging out there for a bit and enjoying some great food and beverage, we drove around looking for the retail district, you know, the small town, downtowny-type area that it seemed like this town would have. We spotted a lady in a park, so we pulled over and asked her if there were any shops around that we could visit. She paused and said "There used to be shops...before the Wal-Mart".