BURLINGTON, Vt. (AP) – The ride is over for The B-Side, for years a counterculture mecca for youthful skaters and riders.

Faced with waning sales, owners Rob and Christine Quinn have decided to close the downtown Burlington skateboard and snowboard shop. They said the shop’s last day would be today.

The B-Side got its name 17 years ago when Christine Quinn was brainstorming with her boyfriend and shop founder Chris Ryan on a trip to New York. Looking for a catchy name, they settled on The B-Side, a reference to the second side of a 45-rpm record. It was 1988, after all, and vinyl records were still around.

“The B side is usually the better song, but not the most popular song, like snowboarding’s not the most popular sport but the better sport,” Quinn said.

From modest beginnings in an 800-square-foot store, The B-Side grew into a skate and snowboard shop with a large regional draw in a space more than 10 times its original size. It was one of the hottest shops in New England and made Burlington a destination for action sports, said Chris Copley, New England sales manager for Burton Snowboards.

“They were definitely ahead of the times. They brought a lot of new products into the marketplace – things that were trending in California. They just brought the action sports industry to Vermont,” Copley said.

But the success of that industry led to the Burlington store’s demise. Many of the products the shop carried started showing up in mall stores as board sports became more popular.

Internet sales also put a big dent in the B-Side’s business. Eventually sales dropped by 60 percent from their peak of $2 million a year.

Rob Quinn is convinced that the industry’s move to the mainstream is what cost his business its edge.

“When I first saw a skateboard on a cereal box, I knew we were done,” he said.