What's the Ponte?

On the last day of my Italian holiday, I found myself on one of the lesser Venetian waterways, the 'Canale dell'Unione'.

As I wandered along the towpath, I encountered a chap who smelled very strongly of cannabis.

'Oi!' he slurred (clearly 'oi' is universal) 'gotta fiver fur ma rent?'

I declined politely, whereupon he suggested that it was 'ugly old people' like me who had made him homeless and that if I fell in the canal he would clap.

Clearly, he was one of those displaced Italian Counts one reads about.....