After an hour on Texas 288 out of Houston, the ocean can take you by surprise. It jumps into view at the crest of the steep causeway leading into Surfside Beach, the massive bridge dividing the sprawling marsh and steel-tangled refineries inland from a small resort town that feels a lot farther than 60 miles away from the city.

“We don’t have the crowds like South Padre Island or Galveston. Things are real laid back,” says Bingo Cosby. Listening to the lifelong resident rehash the finer points of his hometown in the former beer hall that now serves as his Good Vibrations beach shop, restaurant, church and surfboard factory, it’s hard to disagree.

Surfside itself is little more than a quaint forest of stilts topped with modest beach houses. Even City Hall sits 10 feet in the air with two or three police cruisers parked underneath. A few RV parks, a couple of restaurants and a gas station round out this town of about 900 where the first pioneers from Steven Austin’s colony landed in 1821.

These days, Surfside Beach makes an impression for what it’s not. Even during my visit at the height of spring break, the crowd milling about the sand bore little resemblance to the hoards of students drinking to exhaustion in other beach towns and trying their best to come home bearing a stranger’s illegitimate child.

At the other end of the spectrum, no high-rise resorts lord over the beach. There are no golf courses, condos or spas. Traffic is light.

The appeal instead lies in the surfing conditions created by 3/4-mile jetties that also play host to dozens of fishing families on any given weekend. The beach isn’t Cancun, but the water tends to be clearer than in Galveston, and the waterline is relatively clean for sand you can drive on. When the tide goes out, crabbers line the area’s plentiful canals and swamps.

Not terribly much has changed since Cosby watched wild mustangs run down the beach in 1950s, and the lack of the development keeps surfside an affordable getaway for Houstonians. Simple accommodations like the Breeze Hotel and RV Park and the Cedar Sands Motel, both off County Road 257 north of town, offer winter rates well under $100. Groups can rent a three-bedroom, beachfront house that sleeps 12 for $900 a weekend in high season.

North of the only stoplight in town, restaurants serve cheap burgers and seafood that may well have come from a boat you saw earlier in the day. Surfside Liquor meets the locals’ beverage needs until 9 p.m. Other practicalities to consider include the $2-bridge toll if you come from Galveston Island. Also, driving on the beach in town requires a $10 permit that lasts all year. The beach north of town is free and allows camping.

Ike mauled Surfside to a similar degree as its neighbors to the south. When a six-foot storm surge burst through the walls of Good Vibrations, Cosby says “all the bikinis went out with the TVs.”

When he tried to dry the restaurant equipment outside a few days later, someone stole it. All the same, businesses rebuilt quickly, and he was up and running again in two months. Watching the beach barbecues and sand-cruising pickup trucks and barefoot kids flying kites against the sea breeze, you sense the place has returned to a rhythm present well before the hurricane.

“I’ve lived here 58 years, and I’ll tell you, it’s one of the best secrets,” Cosby says.