I'm up north in Sonoma County. Most of the stores here order fish from San Francisco or SoCal...and not very many stock "rare" species. We get a lot of oscars,dempseys and non aggressive types up this way. Very rare to even see a silver aro in any stores around here. Most fish I get are special order. I hate having fish shipped ,and having a store special order them means I don't pay shipping ,but I get a shipped fish that hasn't been acclimated yet in a store even.
I'm leaning towards an ATF or payara. I'm not so into the single fish in a tank thing anymore though. If I could get some bichirs to go with one of those I'd be happy