Paul Lindahl co-founded the company leading the comeback, Colossal Media. He hired Pastusak to teach what he’s been doing for three decades to a younger generation.

Though computers have taken over, ad painting fascinates people, says Lindahl, who likens the craft to performance art.

“People really stop and they watch, and they want to know what’s going on, and they want to know what it is that you’re painting,” Lindahl says.

Apprentice Liam McWilliams, 23, says it’s “very exciting” to work with people who have been doing this their whole lives “through the snow, the heat, day in and day out.”

On a recent day, they made a beautiful, red-lipped woman a brunette in an ad for the social network Badoo as they stood suspended five stories above the street.

Painting ads is one method of promoting products that dates to the 1800s, when advertising murals were painted by hand on blank brick side walls.

Hand-painted wall advertising peaked in the early 1980s and faded in popularity as computers made large-scale vinyl printing possible. But “the respect for a hand-painted sign is still there,” Pastusak says.

So it’s comeback time for a job that’s not easy.

“At the end of the day you have to be able to meet a deadline, and you have to be able to make it look like it wasn’t painted,” Lindahl says.

Fans like Frank Jump, author of the new book “Fading Ads of New York City,” says hand-painted wall ads are close to modern art.

“The best thing about a hand-painted sign,” he says, “is it’s hand-painted.”

The children were identified as Jocelyn Gonzalez, 10, the daughter of the driver, Niely Rosario, 7, and Marly Rosario, 3, both daughters of Nunez.

“They were a good, wholesome family,” a Bronx neighbor, Felicia Lee, 29, told the Daily News.

“The mother always kept an eye on her children. They were typical little girls. They were gorgeous. They were so pretty,” Lee said.

Werner said the crash scene, less than five miles from Gonzalez’s Bronx home, was difficult to see, with contents of the van, including a pink schoolbag, strewn about.

“When you see young kids that have been hurt or injured or lose their life, it’s always harder than if you find someone that’s an elder age,” Werner said. “It affects all our units.”

The 2004 Honda Pilot was headed south on the Bronx River Parkway when it bounced off the median, crossed three southbound lanes and hit the curb, causing the vehicle to become airborne, continue over the guardrail and plunge 59 feet, police said.

The cause of the crash, which happened around 12:30 p.m., was unclear, and police haven’t yet said how fast the SUV was traveling. A city official said the guardrail’s height would be one of the safety issues investigated.

“Obviously, the vehicle was traveling at a high rate of speed,” Werner said. “It hit something that caused it to become airborne.”

Werner said that it doesn’t appear that any other vehicles were involved.

Police said all the victims were wearing seat belts.

Relatives said the grandparents had arrived from the Dominican Republic three days earlier. They had 13 children, six of whom live in the United States. They were headed to a family party when the accident occurred.

Maria Gonzalez, the driver, worked at Fodham University in maintenance.

“I don’t want to live any more. I want to die,” said her husband, Juan Gonzalez

The SUV landed in a wooded area on the edge of zoo property that’s closed to the public and far from any animal exhibits, zoo spokeswoman Mary Dixon said. The vehicle lay mangled hours later, its right doors ripped off and strewn amid the trees along with items from the car. Next to the heavily wooded area are subway tracks and a train yard.

The medical examiner’s office said it expected to release the victims’ causes of death on Monday.

The accident was the second in the past year where a car fell off the same stretch of the Bronx River Parkway. Last June, the driver of an SUV heading north lost control and the SUV hit a divider, bounced through two lanes of traffic and fell 20 feet over a guardrail, landing on a pickup truck in a parking lot. The two people in the SUV were injured.

City agencies will be asked to look at safety issues on the highway including guardrail height, Bronx borough President Ruben Diaz Jr. said in a statement Sunday.

“My prayers, as well as those of my office and all Bronxites, go out to the families of the seven victims,” he said.

The wreck was the deadliest in New York City since the driver of a tour bus returning from a Connecticut casino in March 2011 lost control and slammed into a pole that sheared the bus nearly end to end, killing 14 passengers.

In 2009, just north of New York City in suburban Westchester County, a woman carrying a vanload of children drove nearly two miles in the wrong direction on a highway before colliding with an SUV. Eight people were killed, including four children. An autopsy determined that the woman, Diane Schuler, had downed at least 10 drinks and had smoked marijuana as recently as 15 minutes before the wreck.

Fornatale entered with a surfboard.

“It’s a very sad day for radio,” said songwriter Paul Simon. “New York has lost one of its most acclaimed and wonderful radio personalities. … He really knew his era and his music.”

At New York’s Fordham University, the DJ’s alma mater, president Joseph McShane called Fornatale “the voice of several generations” who conducted soul-searching interviews with the hottest musicians and played their work.

As a DJ on WNEW-FM in the 1970s, he established a loyal following by spinning records by lesser-known artists and album cuts beyond the hit singles.

One of his favorites was Poco, a country-rock band he championed.

He helped launch the careers of singer-songwriters like Suzanne Vega, John Gorka and Christine Lavin. Grammy winner Shawn Colvin told The New York Times in 2001, “Pete helped pave the way for so many of us. He was a rare guy in radio then.”

In the 1990s, Fornatale was featured on the station known as “K-Rock,” following Howard Stern’s show.

Fornatale’s hallmark was “to use music in a very creative way,” his son said.

“He could take a song that you heard a hundred times, but play it in a context — whether on a special occasion or the music around it — that would make some of the most familiar tracks in rock history sound like you were hearing them for the first time.”

Until his death, his father still hosted the show “Mixed Bag” on Saturdays for Fordham University’s WFUV-FM station.

The Bronx native was a Fordham student DJ when he developed the style that grew into the kind of FM rock broadcasting listeners still enjoy.

“The complete freedom to put this package together, for better or for worse stamped me then and is still with me today,” Fornatale said in 2001.

In recent years, he also became a rock historian.

He and his son worked together on a book celebrating the Rolling Stones’ 50th anniversary that they finished just before Fornatale’s death, titled “50 Licks,” to be published later this year or in early 2013. The DJ also wrote “Bookends,” the story of the Simon & Garfunkel album by that title.

Fornatale leaves three sons, including Mark and Steven, and his former wife, Susan Fornatale, all of New York.

The funeral will be private, but a tribute concert is planned for a date to be set.