>We use up and down in directions as well for north and south. I'm going up to New York, or I'm traveling down to Florida... (from where I am)

Can't apply to this case. The street goes nw-se ;). And somehow I think the southeast was "up".

>>My dad used to drive me nuts (& bolts) about the city bus. We were halfway between two stops. He'd somehow fixed one of them to be "up" and the other to be "down", even though the place was as flat as it gets. "Did the bus go up?" - how do I know, I never understood which stop was up and which was down.