Next stop: Barclays. Sorry, what? Come 2012, New York will have its first commercially named subway station. The current Atlantic Avenue-Pacific Street station in Brooklyn will soon carry the name Barclays, well-known as one of the most powerful banks in the UK, and since buying much of the defunct Lehman Brothers, the world. World domination is just one step closer with their rebranding of the second busiest subway station in Brooklyn, and it sets an important precedent for the city's transit system.

There is only one Barclay Street in New York City, and it's in Manhattan, nowhere near the downtown Brooklyn station. Thus, the renaming of the stop is a deviation from the New York tradition of naming its subway stops geographically. But, as seems to be the case more and more these days (due to some "recession" thing I keep hearing about), tradition can easily be severed with a sweet enough sum. In this case, that sum was $4 million dollars.

As part of the Atlantic Yards revitalization project, developer Forest City Ratner is building Barclays Center, the soon-to-be-home of the Brooklyn Nets (neé New Jersey Nets) NBA Franchise, and the name will be a nice piece of synergy for the British Bank. The developer has agreed to pay the Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) $200,000 a year for the next 20 years for the rights to rename the station, one of the oldest and busiest in the borough.

It may be an unwelcome novelty to many New Yorkers, but apparently this wasn't the first time the MTA has attempted to sell of the naming rights of a subway station; they've actually been doing it for the last five years, and Barclays was the first successful bid. If this is true, then it can't be long before you start seeing others pop up. Soon you won't be able to get to Times Square without going through McDonald's Station, Pizza Hut Station, and Subway Station. Wait, that last one actually works.